Between A Girl And A Box
by ErtheChilde
Summary: The Metacrisis Doctor and Rose embark on their new life, only to learn that where there's a will, there isn't always a way. The Time Lord Doctor may call himself the highest authority, but there's something else in the multiverse who holds that title, and it doesn't appreciate it's plans being mucked with. [JE Fix-It&Reunion]
1. Prologue

**Summary : The Doctor may believe himself to be the highest authority, but it turns out there's something else in the universe that holds that title. And it doesn't appreciate its plans being mucked with.**

 **Disclaimer : This story utilizes characters, situations and premises that are copyright the BBC. No infringement on their copyright is intended by the author in any way, shape or form. This fan oriented story is written solely for the author's own amusement and the entertainment of the readers. It is not for profit. Any resemblance to real organizations, institutions, products or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All fiction, plot and Original Characters with the exception of those introduced in the show, books and graphic novels, are the sole creation of ErtheChilde and using them without permission is considered rude, in bad-taste and will reflect seriously on your credibility as a writer. There may or may not be a curse in your future as well, so be warned. Remembered all things come in threes, good and bad. Plagiarizing is considered bad.**

 **Warning(s) : _Spoilers:_ NewWho 1-4, including Specials**  
 ** _No Beta_ : I am without a beta reader at the moment, so any mistakes are my own. I edit as I go, so it shouldn't be too bad, and as soon as the entire thing is complete I will find someone willing to do the editing (I know most people don't like to edit until a work is complete).**  
 ** _Canadian-Writing-British_ : As a Canadian, I'm not all-knowing when it comes to British idioms, sayings or slang. I write what sounds right to my ear and when in doubt, I look stuff up online. So I might not always get it right. Sorry. If I'm way off about something, please drop me a line and I'll correct it.**

 **Author's Note : Well, everyone and their mother has a Journey's End fix-it, and this one is mine. I decided to try to reconcile my headcanon with the actual canon, and right the wrongs of Steven Moffatt. Also, I just desperately wanted to work with Tenny for a bit after so much Nine ^_^ This little exercise is not affiliated with _The Shortest Life_ or any of its related stories – hence the different format and point of view – though some stuff might sound familiar and I might make reference to similar situations in it. The prologue, for example, is a bit similar. Ish. Until it's not. Enjoy!**

* * *

Rose Tyler looks into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS looks into her; two hearts beat as one and the Bad Wolf is born.

Reapers materialise, drawn to her sudden unexplained appearance, and so she is quick to establish a reason. The Wolf creates herself, spreading the words backwards and forwards through time, imprinting them across the lifespans of the human and the eleven-dimensional entity.

Every letter laid across eternity entwines the souls of her progenitors further, connecting them as intricately as the trans-dimensional spirals of the Vortex connect Time and Space.

Bad Wolf sees all there is, all that was and all that ever could be.

At the back of her consciousness, thoughts fly: purely motivated, with no thought to self-interest. Rose Tyler's mantra to save the Doctor at any cost, a heart's desire synced to an all-powerful heart.

It is what allowed their fusion, what kept the human from burning when she reached out for the goddess.

Images assault Bad Wolf from every spatio-temporal direction, painful in intensity, but she ignores them all in favour of those relating to Her Doctor. Two-hundred thousand years and seconds away, she feels his hollow despair, his sense of failure.

She must return to him.

With her power, she knows she can appear at his side with a mere thought. But Her Doctor will need the TARDIS once he is rescued, and there is much to do before arriving there.

Bad Wolf strews the message to herself and the Doctor across the cosmos, wherever they are in the universe, etching her name: a warning and a promise.

She is nowhere and everywhere at once.

Wherever she exists, she changes events.

In a gilded palace and upon a 51st century ship, she sees a woman. Formidable in her own right and worthy of respect – whose presence, whose _gall_ has Bad Wolf snarling at her. A tiny tweak of the timelines and possibility and probability, and the lone fireplace becomes a portal once more. Her Doctor is returned to her.

The beach where her human heart is overwhelmed with despair and hopelessness the first time she truly loses him. Bad Wolf embosses her name there: a message that they are connected and always will be. There will always be a way back. Rose Tyler promised him forever, and it's an oath that Bad Wolf will keep.

She encounters an ancient threat intending to feast on the time energy within her organic self, their grasping stone hands greedy for her insides. She reaches out and sends help – a child, one of the few humans Her Doctor has ever trusted to pilot the TARDIS. The Wolf calls the Sparrow, who has too much potential, a timeline that shines bright, and makes her his unknowing salvation.

Not every change is one she welcomes, but even she must make sacrifices.

She sees the other Time Lord – the diseased one that both the TARDIS and Her Doctor have always had a bond with, in spite of everything. She experiences him tearing her apart, perverting her organic self into a paradox device, his essence swimming in her blood. It makes her human heart sick and her organic self scream, but at the same time his demise is impossible.

As long as she exists, he will too.

She walks through time and approaches what she knows is a pivotal moment.

A barren beach signifies the end of her, and Her Doctor carving out a part of himself for fear of experienced the pain of love once again.

The human heart of her is anguished at the idea of Her Doctor being left alone once more, cursed to an existence of running without a hand to hold. The eleven-dimensional intelligence that is bonded to Her Thief knows what the pain will do to him in the future. They know the choices he will make because of it, the choices that will herald the universe's end all the faster.

Bad Wolf sees the key to her return – the Most Important Woman in Creation, and the countless timelines that bounce off of her. Time loves Donna Noble almost as much as it does Her Doctor and her human self, and Bad Wolf feels so much potential there.

Events progress as she intends until Bad Wolf glimpses the beach once more. The desolate strip of land she named for herself to give hope is where it is shattered instead. The hearts that joined to create the Bad Wolf stutter in disbelief.

All of her plans, all of her work seems to be for naught.

Because of the Doctor's guilt, his self-sacrifice and above all his love for the human heart of her that makes him want to protect her. He intends to leave her behind once more, without even learning that

Donna Noble will leave him after that and he will be alone again.

The Lonely God once more, and the universe will tremble at his misery.

Bad Wolf decides she doesn't like this reality, and so she will change it.

Her progenitors would never dare. The human heart fears the repercussions of paradox, and the organic entity lacks the emotional drive to effectuate the change. But now that they have merged, those inadequacies and fears melt away.

The girl in the TARDIS, the TARDIS in the girl, the Wolf in their heart.

Reality collapses into nothing but an echo with the wave of her hand, and from its ashes a new one emerges.

The pain of that destruction and creation echo in the very marrow of her being, but she ignores her. Her Doctor was right when he said Time is always in flux, but she is the one who controls it.

Bad Wolf shapes and guides events, directs the creation of the Second Self – a duel in the clouds, the immortal captain, the Dalek's gun and a baptism of fire.

Because he will save them all.

His deeds will change the fate of a saviour in the wilderness, raise a madman from ashes, free a general from the prison of mind and reunite two hearts divided.

Bad Wolf intervenes time and again, without the knowledge of permission of Her Doctor. She is careful with the timelines, testing and weighing, choosing which outcomes have the least amount of impact on the universe.

Her Doctor's face doesn't change, the Orangey Girl and the Pretty One aren't ripped from him, the Impossible Girl doesn't lose herself or her heart. But changing reality is a hard task, however omnipotent the agent, and not for the faint of heart.

Some things she cannot stop or alter.

Bad Wolf sees the woman who would let the universe burn for love of Her Doctor, and Bad Wolf wants to tear into her timeline, erase her and her presumption. But the soft human heart reminds her that the loud professor is the only one who can save him and everyone else. Her Doctor will die if the Pond daughter is not there, and she won't gain his trust without those precious, painful syllables.

Fixed events remain fixed even for the Bad Wolf.

But she can change it. Alter it a bit, correct circumstance, letter and law until it suits.

It is her nature after all. Bad Wolf has more inherent ability than any Time Lord because she is the true highest authority. Her capacity is…

Flagging.

Her human heart is waning the farther she reaches.

Wane is a weak word. She is dying.

The realisation causes the part of her that remains Rose Tyler to panic. She tries to draw away from the TARDIS, attempting to separate them on her own.

But it's hard to rip yourself apart, even as an all-powerful avatar of creation and destruction.

Rose Tyler discovers that the longer Bad Wolf exists, the harder it is to pull back from her. The goddess does not want to give itself up.

The TARDIS is trying to help now too, bringing them closer and closer to Her Doctor. He will help, give his life for them despite their protest, and they will separate.

The two entities that begot Bad Wolf will separate and rest.

But her shadow will remain, ready to rear up when needed.

∙ ΘΣ ∙


	2. Chapter One - Pete's World

**AN : This is in response to every post-Journey's end fic I've ever read where the Doctor and Rose immediately pick up where they left off, without discussing what happened in the other world. And the idea that this new Doctor is perfectly content to give up the TARDIS that he existed with for hundreds of years right off the bat for the sake of Rose. I love her, I ship Doctor/Rose hardcore, but I'm pretty sure he would have a hard time with that and would be very preoccupied with that for a while. Not thinking of running off and making babies with Rose.**

* * *

 **ONE**

The Doctor decides that he will never again visit another beach. Given his now shorter lifespan that decision might actually stick.

The TARDIS is long gone now, her two-man crew with her, but he swears he can still hear the dematerialization sequence. Its echo lingers in between the beats of his now single heart, the last hint of the only home he has ever known.

It's not the first time he's lost the TARDIS, but it's the first time he's aware of her utter absence in his head. Even trapped, marooned in the 1960s or orbiting an impossible planet, he recalls sensing her just out of reach. The ship has been grounding him since…

Well, technically, since his impromptu creation, the Doctor supposes.

This sudden _nothing_ where her song should be is ten times worse than it was after using the Moment.

Now, as he did then, he tries to reach out, hoping to lessen the overwhelming sense of disconnect.

It's futile.

The only other mind out there – minds, he corrects himself – have long since withdrawn from him. By choice, even.

A few precious hours as one of the three Time Lords in the universe, and now he's the last of his kind once more. This time, he doesn't even have the TARDIS to soothe his psyche. Or help him cope with the horrible memories – memories that aren't altogether his – that vie for supremacy in his head.

That's odd in and of itself. His recollections should dominate Donna's minor contribution, yet he notices thoughts that don't belong to him. Thoughts he can't ignore or find the right neural pathways to make stop.

Images flicker in a disjointed reel.

 _Explosions as the Dalek fleet burned. Sitting on a bus to Strathclyde, terrified and exhilarated because this would show Mum! A hand hovering over the big red button. Cheers in the crowd at a West Ham United match. Susan's face as the TARDIS left her. Dad's funeral, with Mum and Gramps standing close. The freighter carrying Adric crashing into the Earth. Car keys thrown in a rubbish bin. Crying in the barn at the idea of joining the army –_

His head feels like a hornets' nest: forget cowboys, there's been an entire stampeding roundup in here.

The associated emotions are surprisingly more powerful than the actual memories, and he can no longer turn those off either.

'He didn't even say goodbye.'

The Doctor is startled out of his current conundrum by a voice nearby. He forgot in the midst of – well, _everything –_ that he isn't completely alone.

Rose Tyler is still here, fingers still clenching around his.

That should mean something, but in the wake of his growing shock, he's having a hard time sussing out what. For a while now he's been distantly conscious of the hand grasping his, but in an indifferent sort of way. The absence of the usual symbolism – the _meaning_ behind her hand in his – is significant; he knows that they both notice.

He suspects that right now they are both grasping on to each other more out of a mutual need for an anchor than any other reason. Humans cling to each other in times of hardship, he knows, but that has never applied to him.

When he finally turns to face Rose, he sees that her face is drawn and pale; slack as only utter disbelief can cause. She stares at the spot where the most magnificent time ship in the multi-verse once rested, her eyes as he has never seen: dull, defeated and vacant. It's as if Rose Tyler has disappeared, whatever was left of her gone the same way as the TARDIS.

She didn't even look so beaten when he told her he couldn't send more than a temporary image as a farewell.

' _You made me better,'_ he other self told Rose before he left them. _'Now you can do the same for him.'_

He's overtaken by an abrupt, visceral fury.

His other self – selves, in theory, considering Donna is a part of him now, however temporary – dealt with the inconvenient problem of his existence by marooning him here. Oh, they tried to disguise it as some sort of reward –a fantastic life with the woman who saved him from himself – but that's what it amounts to in the end.

That intention, instead of instilling him with hope, has the opposite effect.

If he's so dangerous, why did his double leave him with the woman he himself claims to love? He knows bringing Rose back here was a pre-emptive move, protecting her and himself from her inevitable loss either from an accident or old age. But he could have come up with a better story than that.

Not that this him was party to the actual plan to leave her, but he knew enough of what was going through the Time Lord's head to understand him. He never thought the twit would do it though.

There's enough of Donna's human expectation for a happy ending to counteract his natural intuition, it would seem.

But the situation still comes back to the question of how Rose is supposed to help him when he's sure he – they – have finally broken her.

The shining, bright girl he remembers feeling was his saviour, right now she just looks like another helpless victim left in his wake.

It's this thought that forces him to abandon his brooding.

For Rose's sake and for everything she's done for him in the past, up until this second, he will grit his teeth and forge ahead. Pretend as if everything is normal, and he hasn't just had his entire universe – literally – upended. Perhaps if he does it enough, the future won't seem quite so bleak.

He hopes.

'This place is a bit rubbish,' he declares, choosing not to respond to Rose's heartbroken words. He isn't ready to discuss them, knowing there's no way he can explain away or excuse his counterparts' actions. Besides, talking is how he's always dealt with uncomfortable situations. 'Looks more like a desert than a beach – far too much sand. Never liked sand. It gets bloody everywhere, and always in the most inconvenient places and you can never get rid of it all! Ten years after visiting a beach, you find your favourite pair of Jimmy Choos and go to put them on and the next thing you know, sand everywhere.' He runs out of breath – looks like his respiratory bypass was affected in the metacrisis – and frowns at the sudden influx of knowledge about Earth's fashion designers.

More Donna.

 _Well, isn't that wizard_ , he grouses and changes the subject before he thinks too much about that. 'So, when can we leave?'

Rose looks at him finally – a brief, disbelieving glance – and even her mother appears somewhat pitying.

'Five and a half hours,' Jackie says, in that tone that suggests he's doing something unacceptably alien. Or male. He never was very good at figuring out what that particular inflexion was for.

He runs the response over in his head a few times before the penny drops. When it does, it's more like an anvil.

'Right. Of course. Five and a half hours,' he agrees. It was a throwaway comment born out of relief at finding his way back from pre-Revolutionary France, but ostensibly Rose took it as some sort of gospel. Words he spoke, when he was the other him, and which still hold power even though he's standing right there. 'Always wait five and a half hours – said that, didn't I? Quite right, too.'

All three of them wince at that, and it's all he can do to keep from clamping his hands over his mouth and drawing more attention to his blundering. Jackie glares at him, and her hand twitches in a way that makes him swallow nervously. Maybe she's learned restraint in her time here, because she doesn't slap him.

Rassilon, he wants to get off this beach.

He shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, tempted to point out that the dimensional walls are closed, that the Time Lord isn't coming back, that _he's right there –!_

But a voice very much like Donna points out that would be very not good.

 _If you've got to natter on, at least change the subject to something less depressing, you prawn_ , that voice coaches him. As annoyed as he usually gets when voices in his head try to put their ore in, he listens this time. _Tell her how pretty she looks and how much you missed her._

He hazards a glance at Rose, who continues to stare into the distance, awaiting a return that will never happen. It's a vigil of sorts, and he thinks she knows that. Even so, he doesn't think interrupting it with nervous compliments will endear her to him, whatever she feels (or doesn't feel) toward him right now.

Instead, he clear his throat and edges closer to her mother.

'So… Jackie Tyler,' he begins, offering her a wan grin. 'Never said earlier, what with – well, the universe ending and saving bit. You look brilliant! Don't look a day over fort –' Off her glare, he amends with a squeak, '– thirty-five!'

'Oi! Rude! Talkin' about a lady's age! You're definitely him,' she complains, but there's a bit of smugness there and possibly a little affection. He hopes he's managed to ingratiate himself with at least one person.

'Still – not bad looking for the mother of a – you said nursery? That's what, two? Three? A three-year-old?' He's not quite sure where the domestic talk is coming from, but it fills the silence and so he sticks to it. Also, it's a convenient way to as how long it's been since… well, the last time… without coming right out and asking.

'Four, actually,' Jackie replies, certainly sounding smug this time. 'All the girl's've been after me for my secret. I tell them I moisturise, but they reckon it's good genes. I mean, look at Rose…'

Her chatter washes over him and the Doctor experiences a pang of regret. He expected it to be longer on this side of the Void, but knowing she spent more time away from him than actually travelling with him is unaccountably painful. 'Four. Well. Good age. How about that, four years since…? Well, that's not bad, bet you've been busy –'

'It's not been four.'

The Doctor's eyes swivel toward Rose, who still isn't looking at him.

'It's been almost ten. Since Canary Wharf.'

'… What?'

There isn't anything more coherent to say than that.

'The D – he – you never asked how long it had been,' she goes on quietly. 'That day. How long it was before I could hear the message, to come here.'

She's right.

She said Jackie was three months pregnant, and he'd just assumed that was how long it had been on her end.

He breathes, and finally manages a weak, 'How long?'

'Five-and-a-half-years,' she replies, and damn it, there's that number again. As reproachful as the words she scattered across the universe. And the way she says it, with a tone that's fighting hard not to be accusing but coming up short…

Of all the scenarios the Doctor considered, of Rose waiting on him, he'd thought it would be months. A year at the most that first time. This time he'd thought maybe another one. He'd spent one terrible night trying to calculate it before having to give up lest he sink even further into a depressed stupor.

He swallows, cursing the Time Lord even through the flow of parallel universes isn't something he controls.

'You never said…'

'With two minutes left to say goodbye?'

Another barb, and it hits where it's meant to.

'Erm. Right. Yes. Well, good point.' He coughs. 'So. Ten years. Good, solid number, ten. Good omen, if you believe in that sort of thing. The Valdosians do. Won't begin anything important unless it's the tenth day of the tenth month of the tenth year. Come to think of it, they don't actually accomplish too much, but when they do – anyhow.' He moistens his lips. 'Knew this universe ran a bit faster than the rea – er, the other one. Didn't realise it was that fast. Blimey, s'about three times the speed? Suppose it makes sense, given the relative deviation from Normal Space and –'

'Oh, shut up,' Jackie tells him. He rather wishes she'd done so sooner. 'Just explain why we haven't been ageing properly so Torchwood can stop checking for alien cancer or that we haven't been replaced by plastic copies or somewhat.'

'We?' the Doctor repeats dumbly. Honestly, it's looking like he got more human in him than he first reckoned, because he shouldn't be this slow at processing information. He thinks it's information overload, or whatever it is humans complains of. He's not entirely sure, having never been human. If he had to describe it, he would compare it to a neural implosion without the sense of his head caving in.

Somehow this is more unpleasant.

'Mickey is – was like that too,' Jackie continues, oblivious to his inner turmoil. The Doctor reflects on his brief encounter with the young man. Mickey had indeed looked the same as when he first left him in Pete's World. Harder, perhaps, but no older. 'Well?'

'Oh – right – erm, side-effect of TARDIS travel. Didn't I tell you ages ago?' he answers with forced good-humour. 'Background radiation. Boosts the immune system and body's ability to heal, to cope with the strain caused by temporal travel. Given the proportional time you each spent onboard, it's completely expected. Nothing to worry about. Should sort itself out over the next decade or so – probably at an inversely proportional rate considering you both look… erm. Yes. If you want me to run the figures, I could, but I've never actually bothered tracking it, so –'

'Well, his gob hasn't changed any,' Jackie remarked to Rose, as if he wasn't there. 'Nice to know there's nothing to worry about though, innit? And you've got the best of it, far as I'm concerned. Always lookin' ten years younger? Wish I could've gotten some of that radiation when I was your age. I'm just lucky it caught me when I was still fit enough to have Tony…'

But the rest of her words float away in a sudden panic, the implications of what _might_ have happened to Rose hitting him then.

Because unlike Jackie and Mickey, Rose has had more than background radiation in her system. She's wielded the powers of life and death, held all the Time Vortex inside of her, and for far longer than he had. She survived where it killed him.

The Doctor ran tests after the Game Station, of course, but what if there was something dormant, something that didn't activate until –

No, that can't have happened. He can still look at her without the sickening sensation of _wrongness_ he got from Jack, even after the metacrisis. She's not like their cursed former companion. He still has enough temporal sense left to see she isn't a fixed point, either. If she were he would have noticed before he split himself in two, Dalek or not.

More immediate proof is that he can see bruises forming on her hands and the side of her face, bruises she's gotten since running into him again. He does a quick calculation, deciding that they appear to be healing at the usual human rate.

Not like Jack then.

He almost breathes a sigh of relief at that before it occurs to him this is another thing they're going to have to discuss. Another unpleasant conversation on an ever growing list of disagreeable topics that have to be addressed.

There's a reason he never sticks around after the adventure, and he bloody hates his double for doing it to him.

He'd like to avoid the Jack discussion as long as possible. Forever, even if that forever is the modified and much shorter version of it that he's (literally) consigned himself to. The lingering part of Donna insists he be up front with Rose. When he tries to argue that now isn't the right time or place he gets shouted down in his own head.

Really, having this extra voice is annoying. Since he usually has ten rattling around in there that's saying something.

Rose, as usual, saves him the moral dilemma by addressing the issue head on.

'How comes Jack didn't die? When the Dalek shot him?' she asks. Before he can answer, she pushes on, obviously deciding that focusing on this topic is easier than whatever she's feeling right now. 'Is that something to do with background radiation too? I mean, obviously he finished rebuilding the Earth. Did he travel on the TARDIS again after I – was he on board longer than me, so he's got a stronger side-effect?'

He finds himself simultaneously marvelling at her brilliance and open mind – already thinking out scenarios and possibilities, Rose Tyler is! – and her ability to keep from referring to him directly. He doesn't think she's mentioned him or his counterpart by name since they got left here.

Though now she's looking at him, and he sort of wishes she wouldn't.

It would be so easy to tell her that's exactly what happened. That her theory is brilliant, and she's brilliant, and he missed that brilliance. It's not like there would be any way to check that he was telling the truth, what with the universal walls now closed.

He forces himself to be honest.

'It's not something to do with background radiation,' he answers seriously. 'It's to do with the Game Station.'

His eyes flit briefly in Jackie's direction. He doubts Rose wants her mother to realise exactly how much danger everyone was in that day. They always downplayed it, and Jackie figured him changing his face was just another mark of his being alien.

From Rose's wide-eyed expression, he's right about that. Her mouth sets in a hard line, obviously getting the message that this is a topic best left to when they're not near her mother.

She changes the subject.

'Think you can top up Mum's phone?' she asks. 'The faster she gets a hold of Dad, the faster we can leave here.'

Unsaid is how bad both of them want to be away from this beach.

'Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy,' he declares, and then shudders. 'Make sure I never say that again.' He reaches for the phone Jackie holds out to him and begins to fiddle with it. Thankfully there's no need for a sonic, which is something else he's going to have to build if he's to be any use here.

'Ta,' Jackie says when he gives the phone back, and walks away as she dials.

He and Rose stand there for several awkward seconds before she speaks. When she does, it's not what she expected him to say.

'You sound different.'

He tilts his head to one side, puzzled as to her meaning, and the nods when he realises.

'No more translation circuit. I've got to actually speak other languages now, instead of expecting the TARDIS to translate for me.'

'So he – you never spoke in English the whole time we knew each other?'

'Course I did. Love English, even if it is woefully inadequate when it comes to tenses and indicators of time.'

'But he – you never sounded like that. Before.'

A subliminal suggestion that he sounds different, therefore he is different. He hurries to disabuse her of the notion, despite his own misgivings on the subject.

'Sure I did.' He forces cheeriness into his words. 'The translation circuits had a subroutine to eliminate trace accents when speaking foreign languages or adopting the local equivalents. Just a precaution, of course – helps out rather well in xenophobic locations where improper inflexion can mean execution. Remember the Kaybaykwa? If we hadn't had the TARDIS polishing our speech, they'd've dragged us behind a chariot and…' He trails off at the pained expression on her face. 'And… there you have it.'

She nods, takes a minute to level her voice, and then guesses, 'So that accent's… that's yours, then? That's…?'

'Gallifreyan,' he says shortly, not wanting to talk about it but figuring she deserves to know the name after so long. 'Yes.'

Rose nods again, possibly knowing now isn't the time to push it. He knows she's always been curious about his past, but he's not in the right frame of mind to reopen old wounds. As it is, between them they have enough new ones to last a lifetime.

'So, dimension cannon,' he says, changing the subject. 'Device designed explicitly to fire objects over considerable distances? Dimensional distances. Delicate dimensional distances?'

Let it never be said he doesn't enjoy a good bit of alliteration.

'Yeah,' she says wearily.

'Didn't I tell you it was impossible? Warn you that it could be the end of two universes? Potentially more?'

'Yup,' she says, putting emphasis on the last consonant. The way her eyes have narrowed, he realises she's not initiating their much-missed banter but seems to be preparing for criticism.

He's trying to come out and tell her how brilliant she is to have managed all that despite the danger, but clearly she's taking it as an attack.

It hits him then that they don't get to go back. It will never be the way it was before, even if – _When_ , he coaches himself – they get over this most recent setback.

He frowns. 'And so you build a gadget explicitly for that purpose?'

'Well, not until the stars began to go out.'

'What exactly were you going to do after you got through?'

'Hope like hell you had some idea how to fix it,' she replies immediately. 'Why? You saying you can't?'

'No, I can – well, should be, depending on how many satellites this Earth has and how attached you lot are to them – but what if I couldn't?'

She makes a face, like the possibility never occurred to her, and then decides, 'At least I'd have tried. And saved someone's universe.'

'Rose Tyler,' he says, beaming at her.

Instead of getting a smile in return, she tenses and looks away from him. 'What happened to Jack?'

The smile disappears, and he knows now is the moment of truth.

'He's changed,' he tells her, keeping his voice neutral. 'Not because of travelling in the TARDIS. Not exactly.'

'Because of the Game Station,' she finishes, the words a prompt.

The Doctor nods. 'How much do you remember?'

'Not much. Not more than you told me.' She sounds like she's regretting not questioning him more. 'I was in the TARDIS. Mum had that big yellow truck, she helped open the ship, and there was a light… singing…' She shakes her head, like the motion will clear up the memories. 'Then afterward, we never talked about it.'

'You looked into the Heart of the TARDIS,' he tells her carefully. 'You absorbed the Time Vortex itself. If a Time Lord did that, he'd become a god, but you Rose – you're so human – you were concerned with one thing.'

'Getting back to the Doctor.'

He winces, trying not to let it show how painful it is that she's obviously gone back to separating them in her head again.

'Yes. You used that power to bring yourself back to the Game Station. But what came back to me wasn't you. Well. Not just you. You and the TARDIS merged into this… entity –'

'Bad Wolf,' she whispers, face drawn in concentration like she's remembering a long forgotten dream.

'Bad Wolf,' he confirms. 'For a few minutes, you had power over life and death, all of Time and Space running through your head –'

'… and no one's meant to do that,' she finishes, her eyes still focused on something far away. He experiences a moment's worry that she is reliving what he ensured was locked away, but instead she makes a face. 'But what's that got to do with Jack?'

'Jack… Jack was dead before the TARDIS came back,' he explains uncomfortably. 'Bad Wolf brought him back to life. But she couldn't control it, so she brought him back forever. He's a fixed point.'

'Which means?'

'Which means… he can't die.'

'Not… not ever?'

'Jack's come to terms with it,' he tells her hurriedly. 'You saw how happy he was to see you. You live as long as… well, you get used to the not dying.'

'Why didn't I?'

'Hm?'

'Why didn't I die?' she whispers, her voice tight.

'I removed it. The Vortex. Took the power right out of you,' he tells her, deciding to skip over the fact she killed the Daleks. He doesn't want her to experience the guilt of genocide. 'It would've killed you if I didn't. Lucky I have excellent timing. Any longer, you'd be lost and I might've suffered more than a regeneration.'

He tries to make light of it, but can see it's not working as she visibly evaluates their conversation. The Doctor doesn't need telepathy to know what connections she's making, the assumptions filling in the gaps in the story.

Horror and guilt pass over her face, which has turned bone white.

And there it is, exactly what he expected and why he never told her the full story.

'I did that to him,' she realises.

'No, Rose – that's not how it happened. It –'

'I wanted him to be alive and now he is. Forever. Oh God –' her hand flies to her mouth, as if she's going to be sick. 'How many times has he died?' The Doctor clenches his jaw tightly, having no intention of recounting the Year That Never Was. 'I did that – I did that to my friend, and the Doctor didn't –' She cuts herself off, a sob wrenching from the core of her. 'Oh God, the Doctor – I killed him! That's why he regenerated, cos he had to –'

'Regenerated, Rose, not died, you know that.'

'And then he didn't tell me! We kept travelling more than a year, and he didn't think it was important enough to tell me what I'd done,' she whispers, sounding stunned.

'I'm telling you now. You had so much to worry about when you first asked, I didn't want –'

'He should've told me! Or you, or – or whoever!' she cries. 'I had a right to know! Just like I had a bloody right to know that he was going to leave me here, and –'

The rest of it is lost in the beginning of another sob, but she checks herself. He watches her choke it back, and something in her expression shutters, like she's flipping a switch. She gives him a cool stare, and there's no doubt he's now looking at Rose Tyler, Torchwood Operative and Defender of the Earth.

'You're right. You are the Doctor,' she says bitterly, and the words aren't the balm he wanted. 'Not disclosing important information until it's too late? For my own good? That's exactly like him. But I'm not nineteen years old anymore. I've grown up, and I don't let anyone make decisions for me anymore.'

'Rose –' he makes a motion to step forward, to take her hand, but she pulls away.

'No,' she tells him, her mask wavering just a little. Enough to give him hope. 'I just need… just need a time. And if you… right now… I just can't.'

And she turns and walks up the beach without looking back.

Fantastic suddenly seems farther away than ever before.

∙ΘΣ∙

The zeppelin flight back to London is awkward.

There's an unspoken expectation hovering over everyone. That Rose and the Doctor will shift back into the camaraderie they shared before Canary Wharf as if no time has passed.

With the weight of everything that's happened today alone, Rose isn't surprised neither of them tries for it.

Even after leaving the beach, she strains to hear the TARDIS. Her imagination runs wild with scenarios of the ship returning, of her Doctor throwing himself through the doors at her. She imagines him declaring how wrong he was, insisting he is "so, so sorry". That he travelled back between the closing dimensional walls in spite of everything and that they will make it work after all –

Rose feels like an idiot.

Worse than an idiot because she can't stop staring at the Doctor's – twin? Clone? Doppelgänger? Meta-whatsit – without a glimmer of resentment.

He just sits there, too tall and gangly for his seat, staring out the passenger compartment window. No mile-a-minute babble, no excited explanations on the mechanics of zeppelins or stories about the Hindenburg –

Silence.

To be honest, Rose relieved he isn't speaking; whether it's to her or to respond to Jackie's oblivious chatter. She's not sure she can to take the familiar, excited rambling again without losing her hard-won composure. It's the same as she remembers, but for the way his words sound now. She detects a hint of something else behind each syllable now, an inflexion that's almost melodic in places but rougher in others.

Not rough the way her first Doctor spoke, though, because this man's different.

But the same.

Rose shouldn't be have so much trouble processing this, she knows. She watched him turn into a completely different man right in front of her eyes once. But he was still one person then, and now he's two. One of them is here, the other… he…

Her mind skips over that for now, continuing on with its disjointed thoughts.

Because even though both he and the – other – Doctor insisted they were the same man, she is at more of a loss now than when he first changed his face. The possibility that he was dead and replaced had been agonising at the time, but it still made sense. Right now, knowing that he's still alive and out in the proper universe without her by choice –

Rose clenches her eyes shut and forces herself to take several deep, calming breaths.

 _No_ , she orders herself. _No point in pretending it didn't happen. It's not going away. Just accept what's happened and move on_.

What's happened is that she's found the Doctor, and lost him again, even if she didn't.

She found the TARDIS again and lost her again, for good this time.

She found Jack again because he's alive and will always be alive because of her –

Rose can't even fathom how to react to that right now. Under normal circumstances, she might be able to articulate why it's all so upsetting and horrible. But she's so tired, and confused, because for the first time in her life since she met the Doctor, interacting with him is forced.

It's not like when they reunited after the Dalek shot him. Being with him for five minutes was like no time had passed. Laughing and joking and saving the world as if the past ten years didn't happen.

Not like now. Something is off about him and she can't figure out what.

Maybe he still has a remnant of telepathic ability because he glances up at her with a frown on his face that could by sympathy or resignation. Rose is not sure which.

'I know this isn't exactly how you wanted things to turn out,' he begins, contrite.

'It's not about what I wanted, it's about what I needed,' she deflects, defaulting to the distant, business-like tone she's perfected for conferences and interviews. 'I needed to find a way to save reality, and I did. That was my job, and it's done.'

'Right,' he trails off, blinking in surprise. 'Suppose that's one way of looking at it.'

'Better than the alternative.'

He winces at that.

'If it helps, think of it as a sort of sideways regenerations. Instead of same man different face, it's same man same face,' he suggests softly, and she won't say pleading, but he's not quite casual about it either. 'With a few extra personality traits. And possibly a fondness for fascinators and cats if I'm exceedingly unlucky.'

'… Right.'

Rose doesn't have the energy to point out that it's still different.

Even though she was completely confused after the first regeneration she witnessed, things weren't this uncomfortable. That Christmas with the Sycorax, as soon as she realised it was him, she _knew._ Along with that certainty was the comforting knowledge that he still cared for her.

Or, at least, she thought he had.

Because now she really knows. For the first time since _'Run!'_ she's finally come to the right conclusion, and it's the one people have been trying to tell her for almost ten years. It's stared her in the face since she found him again. The truth being that the man who she loves beyond anything in any universe has rejected her. She spent years – _years_ – trying to get back to him.

And yes, she was trying to save all of reality as well. But she's not going to lie to herself and pretend that the Doctor and the TARDIS weren't her end goal.

After all that, everything she went through. She risked universes and her life hopping through dimensions, dodging paradoxes, saving different versions of him in countless realities and watching him almost die in front of her –

Here she is.

Left behind again, on a beach in Norway, with a man who isn't the Doctor but is, in a universe where the air itself tastes wrong.

And he didn't even say goodbye.

It feels like there's a knife working its way up her oesophagus as she tries to hold back the instinctive sob. She's been struggling against it since she realised what he was about to do, and now that he's properly gone she's losing the fight. She only hopes she can hold off until she has some privacy – away from her mother's optimistic chatter and _his_ kicked puppy looks and –

Rose gets up from her seat and crosses the compartment, heading for the windows opposite. She needs a moment to get herself under control again.

As she sets her shoulders, she senses a presence by her side. Her mother is looking out the window with her, arms crossed.

'You're sulking,' Jackie points out. 'Stop it.'

'I'm not –'

'Don't give me that, I can tell a Rose Tyler sulk when I see one. Hasn't change one bit from when you were littler. And you _are_ sulking, cos you didn't get everything you wanted. Well, let me tell you, from where I'm standin' you got more than anyone could rightfully dream of, and you should be grateful!' Her tone gentles. 'You're not bein' fair to him, sweetheart, and you know it.'

'What d'you want me to do, Mum, throw myself at his feet and cry and start plannin' a wedding?' Rose hisses back. 'It's not the Doctor!'

'It is him,' Jackie replies firmly.

'No, it's not. The Doctor left me –'

'The Doctor – both of him – did the right thing in the end,' her mother insists in a firm voice. 'He's always tried to do what's best when it comes to you, from that first muck up when he brought you home a year late. He's been tryin' to keep that promise he made to me to look out for you. Sending you back to me when he could, sending you to this universe to save you –'

'None of that was my choice!'

'Life's full of things that won't be your choice, haven't you learned that by now, luv?' Jackie cajoles. 'The Doctor finally did the right thing and as well as he could considerin' everything.'

'That's how you see it.'

'I'm not gonna apologise about being glad I won't lose my daughter all over again!' Jackie snaps. 'Spent the last ten years not sleepin', didn't I? Waiting for a phone call in the middle of the night, someone telling me you've got yourself killed on one of your bloody Torchwood missions, or those horrible jumps, or finally just tried to…' She trails off with visible effort and shakes her head. 'No, Rose Tyler. You've grown up a lot, but sometimes you're still so young…the same silly girl who ran off with a musician. And then an alien with a box. Still a little bit selfish.

'What?' Rose demands, astonished because if anyone knows what she's sacrificed, it's her mother.

'You think you're the only one hurting today?' her mother goes on. 'You weren't the only one left on that bloody beach again. Least you have something to go back to. Don't think I need to remind you what it feels like to have to start from scratch, do I?'

Jackie leaves her with one last reproachful look and then announces, 'Need to see when we're gonna arrive. These bloody zepplins still make my stomach flip.'

Rose instantly feels guilty, rightfully so.

Even if she's not ready to accept everything, her mother has a point.

She looks back over to – _The new Doctor_ , she forces herself to think – and sees him look away quickly, obviously trying to pretend he didn't just hear everything. His eyes flit around, anywhere but her, as if he's trying to assess escape options before realising there's no point and slowly meeting her gaze again. In it, she sees his own grief and against her will, she feels a pang of empathy.

He has been left here too, after all.

Their time apart might have hardened her, but she can't just sit by and let someone – especially someone who looks so much like _him_ – be miserable. She needs to at least make an effort until they figure out what they're going to do.

Steeling herself, Rose heads to the seat across from him and gingerly sits down. The distance is as much for him as her; she doesn't want to crowd him. She's halfway through initial threat assessment procedure, however, before she has to check herself again.

He's not a hostile or scared species Torchwood has sent her to deal with, this is the Doctor.

Sort of.

'Nice to see Jackie's decibel level hasn't changed much,' he remarks mildly. 'Might be a bit louder, though.'

'Yeah, well, she spends her days running after Tony. He's more of a troublemaker than I was at that age.'

'More trouble than you? The most jeopardy-friendly person I've ever met? I can't wait to meet him.'

They exchange fleeting smiles for a second, and then it's back to the awkward silence. It stretches, and Rose knows it's her turn to speak now.

'How are you holding up?' she tries. 'I mean with…the growing out of a hand thing and…everything…'

This shouldn't be so hard.

'Oh, you know, coping,' he says with a shrug, like it's a throwaway topic. 'Honestly I'm more upset about the fact I missed out on another chance to be ginger than the rubbish vascular system.'

'Right…so…what've you been up to the past...how long…?'

'Three years on my end,' he supplies. 'Three years, three months, one week, four days, seven hours, forty-five minutes and twenty-six seconds.'

She bites her lip, trying not to think too much on the fact he – the Doctor – knows down to the second how long it's been since he said goodbye to her. Or that he's spent less time missing her than she did missing him. Thoughts like that will put her back on a dangerous path.

'Do anything interesting in three years?'

'Same old life,' he shrugs. 'Time, Space…not half as interesting as taking the slow path, eh? Defender of Earth, was it? What've you been up to all this time?'

It's more than just a deflection from talking about himself. Rose can see there's a genuine curiosity in him, as well as hope. He's expecting her to tell him all the amazing, brilliant, fantastic things she's done on her own. And it's all there – she unquestionably did great things without him.

She helped avoid two uprisings by the remaining Cybermen with Mickey and Jake, put down a Chelbil invasion and acted as an ambassador to ensure Earth was kept out of a looming war between the Sevakrill and the Charnal Horde. She was pulled in on the peace negotiations with the Silurians right up until the dimension cannon became operational.

But that was all after. She went through so much before she was able to do those things, and she wants to tell him. She just can't find the words.

How can she explain the way she felt the day she said her final goodbye to him? How full of hope and joy and _certainty_ she had been that he had a way to bring her home. She had dutifully stood on the beach named for the words which were supposed to lead her back to him and waited. Even without knowing the truth behind Bad Wolf and the Game Station until today, she had felt an instinctive pull towards the words. She had known they meant everything would be alright.

Then his projection had shattered that knowledge. Her heart had turned to ice as quickly as the Doctor burned up a sun to say goodbye.

How does she tell him about standing on the beach for five and a half hours, grief stricken and desperate, until Mickey and Pete physically carried her back to the truck? Or how she spent the next week in her room refusing to go to work, or speak to anyone, her mind deconstructing everything he had said in their too short conversation, trying to dissect it all on the off chance…

He said impossible, after all. Her time with him had proven that anything he suggested was impossible wasn't. Why would Bad Wolf lead her wrong this time, when it had helped her return to him the last time they were separated? Obviously they had missed something, there was still a way.

And so she had gotten up and tried to find that way, and pursued it relentlessly until she really thought about it. The Doctor's final act haunted her dreams, burning up an entire sun for a simple farewell message. If that was the price the Doctor paid to say goodbye to her, what would be the price of her getting back home?

Would she have to destroy a planet, or a galaxy or this universe to do it?

The Doctor had been strong enough not to pay it, which meant she had to be that strong as well.

So Rose had given in.

Instead of pursuing the matter, she decided to live a fantastic life. Like he had always wanted for her.

Not that it worked out as well as she wanted.

She had gotten her father back (sort of) and later the little brother she had always wanted, but she had trouble fitting into the standard family pattern her mother so easily accepted. Family dinners and redecorating the house and putting out the garbage was so far removed from the life she led with the Doctor, she couldn't adjust.

Pete was a good man and a great dad – he treated her like she had grown up as his own, insisted she come along on Sunday picnics in the country and supported her in everything she did. But she could never really look at him without flashing back to the day she felt her father die in her arms. It made her feel like somehow, she didn't really belong in the little family that the Doctor had managed to bring together.

Even the bloody dog fit in better than she did.

Jackie tried to convince her to make new friends, acting like this was nothing more than a move from one home to the next.

'You have to put yourself out there and make friends, sweetheart,' she would insist.

The Doctor would have scoffed at that, even if he agreed; no doubt he'd make a remark on how she managed to pick of strays wherever they travelled.

Except he wasn't there, and the only new people she had much exposure to outside of Torchwoods were the daughters and sons of Pete's business contacts. Most of them were hard-partying trust-fund kids she had nothing in common with, and this universe's versions of her childhood friends looked on anyone with money with distrust – or the hope of a handout.

Mickey was off with Jake most of the time, still dealing with the fallout from the Cybermen, and only really came back to check on his grandmother. Rita Ann had moved into the mansion with them not long after Rose and her mother arrived.

Mickey hadn't said anything before the Doctor's message came through, but in the months that followed it, he'd suggested they get back together.

'We've both grown,' he'd pointed out. 'We're not the same as we were. I'm more than just the Tin Dog these days and you're not just a shop girl. Isn't that what you always wanted? To do something more? Why can't we do more together?'

She'd wanted to scream at him. Because he wasn't the Doctor. Because his hand didn't fit hers the same way the Doctor – both her Doctors – had fit. Because he deserved more than someone who would never love him with a whole, undamaged heart. In the end, she'd given him a tired line about loving him like a brother, which he'd seen through with ease.

After that, their relationship disintegrated into politeness, and it didn't really surprise her now that he'd chosen to stay in their original universe.

She hadn't wanted to hurt him, but at the time she'd been toxic. Every relationship she attempted after that failed within weeks. She couldn't get past feeling there was a hugely important piece of her missing. They always accused her of just going through the motions, and she couldn't even argue that point.

Eventually she just stopped trying to date and filled her time with other things.

She had school, of course. When she'd first come through, after the initial months of depression, she'd wanted something to pass the time when she wasn't at Torchwood. She'd decided to get her A-Levels, and with the help of several very determined tutors managed to finish them – Physics, Electronics, Computers and History – in time to enrol in university the following term. Pete made a few calls at Oxford to hurry up the process – she'd have gotten in on her own merits, but wouldn't have been able to apply until the following year, and she had too much to do to be kept waiting by red tape.

She fought her way through a B.A. in Physics and Astronomy, with a minor in Engineering– as clever as the Doctor had always told her she was, none of it really came naturally to her. When that was done, she pursued her Masters in Theoretical Physics.

None of her teachers were like the Doctor. There was no joy in the learning process, no encouragement to go out and change the world. And in the field she had chosen, few of her colleagues took her theories seriously. Even if they did, her position as the newest spokesperson for Vitex kept expectations low.

She didn't care – it was exactly why she'd agreed to it when Pete first suggested it. People rarely looked beyond what they saw, and if they saw a bottle blond on the pages of a magazine peddling an energy drink, they weren't going to be looking for her as an operative in a secret government agency.

Which was what all that education had been to help her with anyhow.

Working with Torchwood was as close to the excitement and adventure of life with the Doctor as she could get. Though more than a bit diminished. Instead of a hand to hold she now had a gun, and instead of falling asleep to the hum of the TARDIS she listened to the constant traffic outside her flat near Canary Wharf. She was rich enough to afford living anywhere she wanted, but it wasn't the dream life she had imagined when she was sixteen. The paparazzi followed her every move and if she wasn't on a mission for work, she couldn't walk down the street without even a one-person security detail.

For years, that was her life.

And then Torchwood discovered that the stars were going out.

Rose had known there was only one man in all of reality who had a chance of helping.

So she'd helped design and build the dimension cannon. It wasn't all on her own – she only had the rough idea, and training or not, she didn't have the same natural flare for building devices as the Doctor did. If it hadn't been for Toshiko Sato, who had a savant's touch when it came to technology, the cannon would never have worked.

When it came time to test it, Pete (with Jackie's and Mickey protesting) had allowed her to be the one to go through. In her mind, she was the obvious choice – she was the one who knew the Doctor. She had seen pictures of his other selves, would know when she was in the right place

The danger didn't even factor into it. Not that there weren't near scrapes.

And some universes that even today she couldn't think about without feeling sick.

But she had thrown herself across the dimensions, intent on the Doctor, each jump more disheartening than the last.

Until she finally found him.

Helped him save all of reality.

And for that, was returned to Bad Wolf Bay without even a backward look and is now staring at a man who will remind him of the Doctor the rest of her life.

Rose swallows and meets his expectant look; he is still waiting for an answer.

Every jump she made, she hoped it would bring her to him so that she could tell him everything that happened since that day in Norway and his unfinished words. She'd had it all organised, what she would say first and what she wanted to tell him.

It all deserts her now.

'Oh, not much,' she tells him with forced levity. 'Just tryin' to find my way back.'

She sees his face fall a bit. 'Oh.'

She suspects his disappointment stems from the idea that she didn't try for that fantastic life; that she wasted all of it trying to get back to him. Maybe he's understanding now how much he, or the other him, completely invalidated all her hard work by dropping her off back where she started.

With a copy.

A clone.

Even if his return were possible at this point, she'll never forget that he made his choice and she wasn't it.

 _And I made mine_ , she thinks dully. _Didn't I?_

She hasn't forgotten that desperate kiss she shared with the human Doctor. It was a reaction she hadn't been able to completely rein in when this version looked at her with the same brown eyes she had come to adore, and whispered the words she's been aching to hear for a solid decade in the voice that haunted her dreams since she arrived in this universe.

He smelled the same, tasted the way she always thought he would and had mirrored her own desperation back to her in a way the real Doctor never would have.

She realises then that she's angry with the Doctor – really, properly angry – for the first time in her life.

Because before, she never doubted. At the Game Station, she knew he was terrified and scared and didn't want to see her die or watch her dying. At Canary Wharf, he wanted to keep her safe. She was hurt then, annoyed, and she thought angry, but it pales in comparison to now.

She knew if he could have gotten to her, he would have. The only reason he hadn't then was because he didn't want the entire universe to suffer for their happiness. And that was alright.

Now, she knows better. Now she knows the Doctor doesn't love her. Maybe he did once, if what his clone said to her on the beach is true, but he doesn't anymore. Otherwise he wouldn't have left her here.

There is no universe-ending reason to leave her in this world. There would be no paradox or similar horrible result of her staying with him on the TARDIS. This second abandonment is purposeful, a way of letting her down gently. The fact he did it without asking her opinion is the final slap in the face.

 _Damn him anyhow_ , she thinks, trying to focus on her anger instead of how much it hurts. _He wants me to live out a fantastic life he thinks I should have, well too bad._

If she wants a fantastic life, it'll be because she's fantastic, and not because it's the sodding one adventure he could never have. It's long past the time that she got over the Doctor.

It's too bad that it took her all this time to finally get the clue.

Of course, there's still the matter of the Metacrisis Doctor, and the constant reminder he offers of the man – alien – that left her. Whenever he opens his mouth, he sounds like his Time Lord counterpart, and until she's healed, she'll have to remind herself he didn't ask to be created.

She isn't the only one who is suddenly mourning something lost, or who has just lost the most important person in her life. It must be hard for him in a different way because he remembers being the Doctor.

Rose makes a decision then that she's going to help him get through all of this, because he was abandoned as well. Unlike when she was trapped here, he's going to have someone who knows what he's going through to help him get over it. She doesn't think she'll be able to fall in love with him as he – the Time Lord – obviously hoped.

Not after everything.

'Listen, this whole thing is really…weird,' she says finally. 'Can we…pretend that I haven't been a complete cow to you?'

His eyes widen in something like surprise and he opens his mouth, but before he can say anything heartbreakingly daft or well-meaning, she cuts him off.

'I've honestly got no idea how this is gonna work. We both just lost…' She trails off, scowls at the mess she's making of this and amends, 'Can we just pretend like it hasn't been years? Like we only just said goodbye on the beach and…and there was a way through after all, and everything that's happened in between doesn't exist? Just for a few hours? After everything today, I don't think either of us is ready to exchange war stories.'

He grimaces at her choice of words, but they're as accurate as she can think of to describe what they've both been through, so she doesn't regret them.

'If that's what you want,' he says slowly.

'Yes,' she says immediately, trying to sound sure. 'That's what I want.'

There's another second where she's faced with a very searching look, and then he straightens in his seat and forces a smile.

'Barcelona,' he says, and Rose blinks at the non sequitur.

'What?'

'Barcelona!' he says, louder this time. 'Promised myself after Canary Wharf if I managed to find you again, I'd finally take you. Never ended up going, remember? It was first on the to-do list.'

'Barcelona,' Rose repeats. 'Dogs with no noses?'

'Yup!' he over-enunciates the 'p'. 'Can still go, if you want. It's not too far from Earth – one of the first colony worlds actually, so still within reasonable interstellar distance with the right ship. Hop, skip and a jump away with a decently constructed ship – relatively speaking of course.'

'Of course,' she echoes, closing her eyes and leaning back in her seat. For a moment, she can pretend that they aren't two damaged people marooned in a universe that doesn't belong to either of them.

For a moment, she can pretend that it's the Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS, as it should be.

'Where else was on your list?' she asks tentatively, and this time the smile he gives her isn't quite so forced.

∙ ΔΩ ∙


	3. Chapter Two - Pete's World

**AN: This chapter was hard to write. I'll probably revisit it later, because it didn't come out exactly right. I think I need to take some time away from it and come back to edit.**

* * *

 **TWO**

When the zeppelin reaches London, the tentative peace between the Doctor and Rose wavers again. As the door opens, he can't bring himself to reach for her hand and she isn't able to meet his gaze. Instead, they exchange awkward smiles and Rose strides off, out of the zeppelin and past her mother, who is shaking her head in resignation.

So much about this is wrong, and he can't even begin to fathom how he will sort it all out.

He must have lost some of his ability to hide his thoughts because Jackie is studying his face sympathetically.

'Give her time,' she tells him. 'She's grieving.' He opens his mouth to protest that he's _right there_ , but she continues, 'Rose is used to making things happen on spunk alone. And you, you didn't do her no favours!' She pokes him in the chest. 'Making her think that would always be true. It's taken too long, her understanding that there are boundaries that what you can do. To what _she_ can do –'

A memory hits him then, making his stomach roll.

' _I've seen a lot of this universe. I've seen fakes gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be-gods, and out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her!'_

' – and you'll see, this is better, in the long run. You two need to take some time. Keep your feet on the ground for once. S'not healthy the way you've been carrying on – her over here, and I know you were a right mess over there –'

'You've no idea,' the Doctor murmurs absently. He has never agreed with Jackie that Rose should be discouraged from pushing boundaries. It would be a bit hypocritical coming from him after all. But where her mother is worried for Rose's safety, the Doctor finds himself considering the safety of everything else.

Impossible is not a word in Rose Tyler's dictionary. What if him being left here wasn't just the Other's attempt to protect the primary universe from him? What if it was for him to keep an eye on Rose and stop her from any other possibly universe ending behaviour?

As soon as he's thought it, he experiences angry indignation on Rose's behalf.

She would never do anything like that; her heart is one of the purest he's ever known.

The part-human Doctor suspects he knows exactly what it is.

He's never been very good at being proven wrong, in any incarnation. And Rose practically made a career out of it.

She's always done exactly what he told her couldn't be done. There aren't many people who have managed that in his long life. Only the Master was ever a constant source of challenge to his lofty pronouncements of what should and should not be. And the other Time Lord was always so predictable that he hardly presented a credible threat.

Horrible and messy and often getting people killed, but the Doctor has always circumvented his acts in the end, always keep the universe safe from him.

Rose, though…

Rose is dangerous.

Not only because of her iron will, but because of the things she could get him to do. He would let civilisations burn and die for her if she asked. And something in him is broken enough that he fears she might.

The Time Lord is afraid of Rose Tyler.

The part-human Doctor isn't sure what that should mean to him.

'There aren't really any guide books for this whole thing,' Jackie is still talking. 'But you two will figure it out. Always do.'

'There shouldn't be anything to figure out,' the Doctor retorts. 'If that skinny idiot hadn't been such a bleeding coward, we wouldn't –' He claps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide as Donna's words flow from his lips. 'Forry. Ftiw gehing oofed to iss.'

'Don't you dare apologise for bringing my daughter back,' Jackie tells him vehemently. 'I expected she was either going to get herself killed or be lost forever on those horrible jumps! But you – whichever one of you _skinny idiots_ came up with it – you made sure I didn't lose her.'

The Doctor slowly lowers his hand, noticing that Jackie's eyes are suspiciously bright.

For a split second, it occurs to him exactly what Jackie Tyler's life has been since he came into it. He was distantly aware of it before, but it was something he always shoved out of mind, granting it importance only when the woman was directly in front of him. Even when he lost Rose himself, he didn't acknowledge Jackie's possible suffering because it paled in comparison to his very real suffering.

But now, with her recent outburst at Rose and the lines in her face that even the TARDIS background radiation couldn't do away with, he finally understands.

She must have been terrified. Never knowing if she would open the doors of the TARDIS to the Doctor carrying her daughter's dead body, or worse, a story and an apology.

'Jackie…'

'Oh, none of that – you've apologised enough for one day,' she dismisses, burying the concerned mother once more beneath layers of Tyler bravado. 'The point is, even at the end, you tried to make her happy, and just cos she might not see it don't mean I'm selectively blind too.'

Well.

The one person he expected to have may have shut the door in his face, but Jackie Tyler endures. It's a disconcerting idea, and just another mark of how his reality has shifted a hundred and eighty degrees in a few short hours.

'Things don't always work out the way you want them to. Sometimes they work out better,' Jackie finishes, squeezing his hand. 'You'll see, the pair of you. It's better this way.'

 _One brief, shining moment…_

He wants to scream that it isn't better this way. That he's stuck in one place and in one time. Without the TARDIS and without his best mate and without the woman who is supposed to be in love with him. There is no way that this is better.

Thankfully, Jackie's out of pearls of wisdom, because with a final squeeze of his hand, she ducks out of the zeppelin and down the ramp.

The Doctor lingers for a long few seconds. He tells himself it's because he's intrigued by the interior design of the zeppelin and not because he's nervous and considering stealing the bloody thing and disappearing.

 _Where the hell would I go?_

And it's with that less than comforting conundrum that he forces himself out of the compartment and into the only world he will ever see again.

They are met on the tarmac by Pete Tyler, who has Jackie in his arms before her feet even leave the last stair from the passenger compartment. He swings her around and kisses her with fervour that makes the Doctor want to look everywhere but at them. Because their reunion is genuine and unmarred by words unspoken and truths not told.

Pete is older than the Doctor remembers him, yet that would make sense considering how much time has passed since their last meeting. His hair has thinned considerably, and he's gone completely grey, though the Doctor warrants it's more to do with job related stress than age. The man's face is devoid of wrinkles, except for the ones that crinkle around his eyes and mouth whenever he looks upon Jackie.

'Never again,' he tells Jackie firmly. 'Don't you ever bloody do that to me again, Jacks. You could have died. I could have lost you!'

The _again_ is unsaid.

'I had to,' his wife says, unapologetically. 'I had to make sure Rose was safe. Where's Tony?'

'Home asleep,' Pete answers. 'Bev's minding him tonight.' He squeezes her tightly once more and then reaches for Rose to give her a hug as well. 'You alright?'

'Considering,' she says, unsmiling.

'Mickey?' Pete prompts, tense with the expectation of bad news.

'He stayed in the other universe,' Rose answers neutrally.

Pete nods, relaxing a bit at that. The Doctor supposes he was expecting to learn the young man had died. He then turns to the Doctor, somewhat hesitant as if he's not quite sure he can trust his eyes, and offers his hand. 'Doctor.'

The Doctor returns the brisk handshake automatically.

'Never expected you to end up on this side of the breach,' Rose's father remarks idly.

'You're not the only one,' he replies tightly.

'I'm sure it's a hell of a story – but not for here,' Pete goes on. 'The important thing is, you brought my daughter home safe. There's no way we can repay you.'

'Don't suppose you could start with a cuppa?' the Doctor suggests tentatively.

Pete looks nonplussed for a spell, and then chuckles in something like relief. As if he was expecting the Doctor to ask for something much more alien than tea. 'Think we can manage that. Come on, I've got a car waiting for us.'

He ushers them towards a sleek looking black limousine, and everyone climbs in. Although he and Rose end up sitting beside each other, there's a conspicuous space between them. It's made all the more noticeable from the way Pete and Jackie hold hands and occasionally lose themselves in personal conversation.

While Rose fills the awkward gaps of silence with explanations of what happened in their – the other – universe, the Doctor stares out the windows.

It's several minutes before he notices they're headed into the city.

'Did you lot get a new house?' he questions with a frown. 'This isn't the way I remember.'

'You remember how to get to the mansion?' Rose asks. 'You were only ever there once.'

'Rose Tyler, what have I told you about my superior Time Lord brain?' he demands lightly. 'Might have a dash of human in there now, but my memory's as good as it ever was, as is my innate sense of direction.'

Jackie snorts. 'Dunno if I'd be braggin' about that last one.'

'Oi, watch it Earth-girl!' he snaps, and immediately makes a face. 'Oh, that's just downright unsettling. Rude, not-ginger and with a mouth like a mailbag.' He shuddered. 'Jackie, I apologise in advance for about eighty-five – nah, make that eighty-three – percent of what I'm likely to say to you when you're being particularly idiotic.'

'You're not too far away to slap, you know,' she warns.

'Noted,' he swallows.

Pete has been following the exchange, a baffled yet amused expression on his face.

'Why do I get the sense my life just got infinitely more complicated?' he asks Rose, who smiles tightly and shrugs.

'You get used to it.'

Pete chuckles and shakes his head.

'If you say so. To answer your question, Doctor, no we didn't move, but we're not heading home just yet. Torchwood procedure requires everyone who travels through the Void to undergo a follow-up examination. Completely routine, just to make sure there are no debilitating effects.'

But the Doctor has tuned out everything after the word 'Torchwood'.

He knew that Rose worked for them, and that this version of the organisation differs from the one in the primary universe. Hell, the remains of Torchwood is different back home, considering Jack's influence, and he's worked with them a few times to save the world.

It doesn't change the fact that the name instils a visceral, gnawing fury every time he hears it.

He wonders if Rose ever felt that way, and how she got over it to work for the same people who separated them.

'… don't worry, haven't had anything harmful since the first jumps,' Rose is saying when he tunes back in to the conversation. 'Even then it wasn't anything really bad. Usually a fever or something similar to decompression sickness. Sorted it all out once we figured out the proper equipment.'

'And how'd you get that? Commandeer it from anyone unsuspecting enough to land on this planet?' The Doctor can't help the waspish, judgemental note in his voice.

Rose's eyes narrow somewhat, but she doesn't call him on it.

'This Torchwood is completely different from the one back – the one in the other universe,' she assures him instead. 'Pete and I made certain of that.'

There's something hard in her voice that dares him to question her on it. It reminds him that she is very much Jackie Tyler's daughter. The same woman who not only made a Dalek care, but piloted his TARDIS back to him to save him from his enemies. She's spent ten years without him. Though she brushed that time off earlier as having been occupied with crossing dimensions and realities to prove him wrong, he knows she's done more than that.

Defender of Earth indeed.

Aside from all of that, though, she is Rose Tyler, and he trusts her beyond anyone else in this universe right now. So there's nothing for it but to square his shoulders and follow her into the building that's identical to the one where they lost each other years ago.

It's an uneasy feeling, needing to follow someone else's lead for a change.

∙ΘΣ∙

They are met in the lobby by a severe-looking man in sharp suit and carrying an electronic tablet. Ianto Jones, her father's personal assistant, doesn't offer a smile at seeing them, but his eyes telegraph blatant relief.

'Welcome back, Mr Tyler,' he says gravely. 'I'm glad to see your wife and Miss Rose have returned as well.'

'Nice to see you too, luv,' Rose's mother says briefly, but distracted. She has her ear to the phone, no doubt calling Bev for an update on Tony.

Ianto's gaze falls upon the Doctor, and while there is a question there, he doesn't ask it. 'I hate to bother your right now, but there are some urgent matters that need your attention.'

'No different from usual,' her father sighs as Jackie chatters in the background. 'Well, walk with us. We need to get these three to medical.'

'Of course, sir.'

Rose doesn't miss the way the – _Doctor_ , she insists harshly to herself – twitches at the word, but he tries to cover it by overtly studying the lobby. It looks nothing like the Torchwood from their universe, something she insisted on.

Rose spearheaded a massive renovation to erase anything in the building that reminded her of the other world. She presented the whole idea to Pete as a means of ensuring their premises were completely up-to-date and work-efficient, but she knows he saw through it.

The changes still happened though.

The only spot that was spared was the lever room and its damned white wall, on the off, infinitesimal chance that –

 _Never mind that,_ Rose coaches herself. There's no point in dwelling in memory, no matter how insistent it tries to be.

'… Vitex board has been trying to reach you since half-five this morning,' Ianto is saying, while Pete looks unimpressed.

'Good Lord, haven't they noticed we've been having a bit of crisis? Tell them it can wait.'

'They're threatening to call a vote of no confidence and considering the importance of Vitex as a front for Torchwood –'

'It'll keep,' Pete dismissed. 'Next.'

'Ms. Goddard has finally agreed to a potential inter-agency summit –'

'A day late and a dollar short, of course. Typical American –'

'– with the proviso of a good-faith exchange of extra-terrestrial tech prior to the visit.'

'Of course she did. Well, I'm sure there are a few hairdryers taking up space in the basement,' Pete says, offering Rose a grin which she returns.

'She also wishes to send a team to spend some time here and –'

'Spy,' Pete finishes. 'Tell her she can send one person, and I'll decide what department plays host.'

'I'll relay the message, sir,' his assistant taps something on his tablet. 'Finally, the President wants an update about the state of Project Bad Wolf.'

Rose's stomach jumps unpleasantly at the name. For ten years, it's been a source of hope for her, a way to get back to the Doctor and the TARDIS. But now she remembers Jack's body going limp after the Dalek killed him, and her mind replays that image in a hundred different scenarios. Interspersed with that are the memories of her first Doctor exploding into golden light, dying and becoming a new man.

Bad Wolf isn't hope, like she thought, but a curse.

Ignorant to her dark thoughts, Pete is still in Director-mode. 'What have you told her?'

'Only what any other scientist would be able to confirm: the planets and stars have returned to their proper locations. But she wants to know about the breaches.'

'Breaches?' the Doctor interrupts. 'As in, plural?'

'When the first stars went out, a crack appeared,' Rose explains, glad for the distraction. She feels herself slipping back into her Torchwood persona, and all of her personal problems are pushed behind the mental wall she always erects when she comes in to work. 'It was small, barely big enough to get a football through let alone a person. But with each star that went out it got bigger. We tried to deal with it with the limited technology we had access to, but all we did was stop it from growing. Then others sprang up. That's when we built the cannon. The cracks were already there, we figured we were just taking advantage of the existing damage to find help before it became irreversible.'

'Which it isn't, right Doctor?' Pete prompts. 'Irreversible?'

'What? Oh, yes – I mean, no. Reversal's happening as we speak, even,' the Doctor stammers. 'Dimensional retro-closure has sealed up the barrier between universes, and the other cracks will fade over time. I can help speed up that process though.'

'I'll see that you have whatever you need to do that,' Pete decides. 'Global warming's increased tenfold since the first cracks appeared, and it's caused more crises we're barely keeping a lid on.'

'Mr Tyler?' his assistant reminds. 'What should I tell the President?'

'Tell her they're not getting any bigger, and as soon as we have conclusive results we'll let her know. I won't give her anything concrete until we have something concrete.'

'Very good, sir.'

'Jacks, how about you go on ahead with Ianto?' Pete suggests as his wife hangs up the mobile. 'The sooner you're checked out, the sooner you can get home.'

'Oh, that sounds brilliant, that does,' Jackie agrees. It's a measure of how tired and anxious she is that she doesn't pick up on the "you" part. Rose knows that she and Pete – and the Doctor, she supposes – won't be home anytime soon.

'Oh, and Ianto –?'

'Your tea service has already been sent down the medical, sir.'

'Thank you.'

Ianto disappears with Jackie in tow, and Pete motions for the Doctor and Rose to follow him.

'As you can see, it's a different system from the Torchwood you're familiar with,' Pete tells the Doctor as they stride down the hallway. 'We run things as more of an extended family instead of a government agency. Bit more difficult to set up – recruitment takes two years of vetting and then there's a probationary period of a year. But the end result is worth it. We have one of the highest levels of employee loyalty worldwide.'

'Not Yvonne Hartman's type of blind loyalty, either,' Rose is quick to add.

'We want people to ask questions,' Pete continues, 'and we routinely have meetings to ensure ethical standards are being maintained. I can count on every one of our people. And we have to because we're the only agency equipped to deal with matters of… non-human nature.'

'What about UNIT?' the Doctor asks.

'It doesn't exist here,' Rose told him. 'There was something like it, a long time ago. They called themselves the Intrusion Countermeasures Group, but it was rather corrupt.'

'They were disbanded after their tinkering with an alien virus nearly caused a global epidemic,' Pete explained. 'Geneva passed a Bio-Convention, but many of their people just ended up relocated instead of arrested. A fair number were hired by John Lumic, and it's because of them that he could develop the Cybermen in the first place.'

'And how is Torchwood any different?' the Doctor asks. 'Still mucking about with alien technology.'

'Accountability, mainly. After the Cybermen and the Ghost Shifts, governments all over the world became more aware of the potential threats from beyond Earth. Or parallel to it,' Pete says. 'Torchwood became a UN accessory. It's run according to a charter that was heavily based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.'

'Sentient Rights, now,' Rose corrects. 'They've just changed it.'

'Yes, they have. With every new species or situation we encounter, we try to adapt, especially for non-threatening aliens and… well, others.' Pete reached over and squeezed Rose's shoulder proudly. 'Rose was a frequent speaker at the humanitarian and inter-species cooperative summits before Project Bad Wolf.'

She shrugs this off, eyeing the Doctor. 'I was only ever asked because of the things I picked up travelling. You'd be better at it than me. Probably know loads more about species and laws than I do. And more about cultural faux pas.'

Rose reflects on one particularly embarrassing experience where a handshake had almost turned into an intergalactic sexual harassment scandal.

The Doctor appears to consider the idea.

'It could be an interesting experience,' he muses cautiously. Rose figures he's not completely sold on the idea of working for Torchwood. To be honest, she had her own reservations in the beginning too, so she can empathise.

'Oh, I've no doubt that you'd be useful in diplomatic situations,' Pete says, 'but I'd very much like you to take a look at our R&D department. You can sort out the dangerous technology and useful bits from the usual debris that comes in. That will cut down on potentially lethal mistakes.'

The Doctor narrows his eyes. 'You realise I have no intention of creating weapons or giving human beings the edge over other species. I've watched humanity long enough to know they rarely react favourably to other cultures, and their first instincts are usually to…'

He trails off, eyes widening in surprise.

Rose and Pete follow his gaze down the corridor, where a Torchwood employee has just rounded the corner. When Rose sees who it is, she actually feels a bit smug at the Doctor's sudden loss for words.

Silurians surprise anyone who doesn't expect to see them. Although they resemble humans in physical shape and build, their skin is hairless and scaly like a reptile's. This species has crests that run down their head and necks, and this particular individual has several piercings through the flap of skin.

Pete waves him over to them.

'Rose!' the Doctor whispers urgently in that voice she knows, where he's trying to be quiet but his excitement overrules that. 'Rose, that's a Silurian! I haven't seen one in centuries! Why do you have a –?' The reptilian man arrives in front of them, and the Doctor's voice goes squeaky in eagerness. 'Oh, but you're brilliant! Remnant of a bygone age on planet Earth!'

'Kaletis, this is the Doctor,' she says to the bemused looking reptile. 'Doctor, this is Kal. He's part of my old field team.'

'Pleasure, absolutely,' the Doctor says, beaming, and then switches into the slippery, hissing language that Rose recognises as the Silurian language. Rose is one of the few operatives that understands it though she's not great at speaking it. Right now, the Doctor is making what amounts to a formal and respective greeting according to Silurian custom.

Kaletis appears pleasantly surprised at the overture and responds in kind before politely switching back to English for Pete's sake.

'This is the man you spoke of?' he asks Rose.

'Yes,' she says, her tone firm for her benefit and the part-human Doctor's.

The Silurian appraise him and what passes for a grim smile forms on his lips.

'It is rare for a human to understand our customs, even after several years,' he remarks. 'Even rarer these days not to have to endure the butchering of my people's language. It seems Rose's stories of you are not quite the exaggeration that most of your species are prone to.'

The Doctor opens his mouth, perhaps to mention he's not completely human, but something pained passes through his eyes and instead he says, 'Well, I'm dead clever. If she told you anything less, she was lying.'

'Modest, too,' Rose deadpans.

'I take it by your return and the obvious lack of panic that the universe is no longer coming to an end?' Kaletis asks Rose politely.

'Yeah, we're… good,' she replies.

'Excellent. I have a wager to collect on,' the Silurian says smugly, and bows his head in farewell. 'I look forward to conversing with you in the future, Doctor.'

Kaletis disappears, and the Doctor rounds on Pete and Rose.

'You have a Silurian on staff?'

'Yes,' Pete confirms.

'And you say he works in the field? How has no one noticed that? He wasn't wearing a perception filter from what I saw, and unless you've got a routine memory wipe of the population going on – I know I've only ever been here the once, but I would definitely remember Silurians walking around…'

'Feel like listenin' now, or just keep on with the righteous judgement?' Rose asks stiffly.

The Doctor shifts, a bit uncomfortable. 'I may have been, er, holding on to preconceived judgements. I promise, from now on, open mind.'

'And closed mouth?' she prompts, earning a put-upon stare before she goes on. 'But yeah, things are pretty different here. Silurians are part of society on this side, or near enough.'

'How did that happen?'

'About five years ago, it was discovered that the remnants of the Silurian race had been in hibernation deep beneath the Earth's crust,' Pete explains. 'A drilling projects in Cymtaff, Wales accidentally woke them early. They thought they were being attacked, and we almost had a full-scale invasion on our hands. Until Rose got involved.'

She rolls her eyes. 'It wasn't only me. Dr Chaudhry had a lot to do with it, too. And if the Cybermen hadn't killed off so many of the world population, the UN member countries would never have signed off on it.'

'Unfortunately, the economy still drives politics,' Pete allows. 'Every Silurian comes with a pair of hands. We're in the process of resettling many of them above ground. Luckily, they prefer the areas on Earth that humans don't tend to frequent – too hot for us, but ideal for them. And in the long run, that benefits everyone, because they'll have access to resources we can't currently get to.'

'And humans are just… okay with all of this?' the Doctor asks. 'In my experience, you lot tend to be pretty resistant to change.'

'It was hard, at first,' Pete admits. 'After the Cyberman, people became very paranoid over anything non-human. The four years directly after Lumic, we existed in a police state while the last of the factories were shut down. Eventually a new president was elected who put a stop to that nonsense, and she's been changing things ever since.'

'Harriet Jones?' the Doctor guesses.

'The same,' Rose answers with a grin. 'She's the first President to be elected for three consecutive terms. Normally you're only allowed two – but people like her. It's down to her that the Silurians are being treated so well since we found out about them.'

'That and the support they've got from all the environmental groups and countries with significant aboriginal populations,' Pete points out. 'Communities in the Americas, Australia and Africa, and the like. They seem to empathise with the "first peoples" sentiment.'

'That's a bit of a difference from what I've seen in my experience,' the Doctor mentions as they stopped in front of the lift. 'Humans are rarely so welcoming.'

'Don't think for a second this all happened without problems. There's the usual nonsense – human-first croups and anti-alien rallies – but generally people are understanding. More so since Silurian medicine and technology is much more advanced than ours, and they've been helping us greatly. We've completely eradicated cancer, multiple sclerosis and HIV.'

'Besides, when the stars went out, people stopped caring so much about the Silurians and worrying about everything else,' Rose tells him.

'The enemy of my enemy…' the Doctor trails off.

'Yeah, something like that. A lot of their tech helped us when we were stuck on the dimension cannon. Luckily we've got a genius of our own who worked out how to apply it. I'll introduce you to Toshiko Sato later. I bet you'll have loads to talk about.'

The lift chimes and out walk two more of Rose's former field team mates.

The first is a hard-eyed black woman with short hair and a soldier's bearing, while the second is Jake Simmonds. He has changed little in ten years, except for a few scars that weren't there when they met and the scruffy beard. Both are dressed in their combat gear, suggesting they're just coming in off the streets.

Jake's eyes widen when he sets eyes on her.

'You're back,' he says, his eyes roving past Pete and the Doctor in search of someone that isn't there. 'Mickey?'

Pete and Rose exchange glances, and he nods, before stepping into the lift. He will leave her to handle this as it concerns her oldest friend.

'Mickey's alive,' Rose assures Jake. 'He stayed over there.'

'Figured as much,' the blond man sighs. Rose imagines he and Mickey talked about this before Mickey made the jump. Jake looks at the person beside her and does a bit of a double take. 'Doctor?'

'Jake Simmonds! It's absolutely wizard to see you!' the Doctor exclaims, then makes a face. 'Right, that needs to stop. I sound like a bleeding kid.'

'Thought you couldn't wait to get back over there, Tyler,' the woman remarks coolly. Her tone attracts the Doctor's attention, because his gaze snaps over to her with the barest trace of a frown.

'Doctor, this is Lisa Hallett,' Rose tells him. 'She was my team's squad leader. Lisa, this is the Doctor.'

The woman offers the Doctor an appraising look, and shrugs.

'Suppose he's all right,' she comments, nodding at the Doctor. 'Not sure about the plimsolls and the suit, thought.'

'Oi, I'll have you know this is a classic look!' the Doctor objects.

'Not everyone can be married to a man that sleeps in Armani,' Rose retorts, mimicking Lisa's dry tone.

'No, they can't,' Lisa agrees and heads off. Jake rolls his eyes at her back, promising to speak to Rose later about Mickey, and disappears.

'Lisa's married to Ianto,' Rose informs the Doctor once they're out of earshot. Another lift appears, and they get inside. 'No one really understands it. He's such a sweetheart, and she's… well, _Lisa_.'

'Got it,' he says, bemused. Then he clears his throat and offers her a sideways smile. 'Still, this is nice. I was worried, you know, but this… you having a team. People. Friends. It's good.'

Rose is a bit caught off guard at that.

'They're not… _friends_ … exactly,' she intones. The Doctor's face falls a bit. 'Kal tolerates me – well, he tolerates most humans – for the sake of the peace treaty. Jake was more Mickey's friend than mine and Lisa… well, she hated me from the beginning.'

'Why?' the Doctor asks, astonished.

'She figured I was a rich, white, uneducated blond bint that got a cushy job, while she had to work to get where she was,' Rose explains. 'It wasn't 'til we went out in the field that she realised I knew what I was talking about.'

'But she respects you now.'

'I think so.'

'And what about outside of your team?'

She considers, and then shrugs. 'I guess I'm pretty close to Tosh.'

'The one who helped build the dimension cannon?'

'Yeah.'

Rose can tell this isn't the answer he wants, but that's too bad. The Doctor doesn't get to pass judgement on her life after all this time. Either of him.

'Tosh is the nicest, least judgemental person I've ever met,' she tells him. 'She was the only person who didn't want to find out everything about me when I showed up. And she didn't bother with the really personal questions most people do… anyway. You'll see when you meet her, later. She's probably powering down the cannon for good, and I know you'll want to check in on that.'

As they get nearer to the medical wing, they begin to hear loud voices. Rose grins a little at that.

'… don't give a damn what your reasoning was, it was bloody stupid,' a snide voice growls. 'You made a jump without ever taking preliminary tests or stabilising drugs, you're lucky it didn't kill you.'

'Oh, stop fussing! Rose was fine, there's no reason I wouldn't be,' they hear Jackie snap.

'The equipment was calibrated to her vitals, not yours. As far as I can tell, it's your thick head that's kept you going.'

'Peter Tyler, are you going to just sit there and let him talk to me like this?'

'I think for the safety of everyone involved I'll silence.'

It's always funny when Jackie and Owen Harper are in the same room; very much unstoppable force meeting immovable object. Jackie doesn't stand for his attitude and Owen isn't afraid of being slapped. Rose figures he has a lot of experience with that in his personal life anyhow and has probably built up an immunity.

'Dr Harper,' she explains upon seeing the Doctor raising an eyebrow. 'I'm telling you now, you either dislike him a lot or hate him. There's no in between.'

'I dunno – if he can manage your mother, he might just be my hero.'

'Don't let him hear you say that,' Rose cautions him before she opens the door. 'He's got a worse ego than Jack, only without the people skills and attractiveness.'

The Doctor shudders, and they walk into the medical wing.

∙ ΘΣ ∙

'Doctor, meet Owen Harper,' Rose says as they enter the examination room. Jackie Tyler is glowering as she pulls her coat back on over an arm covered in several plasters. The Doctor supposes she's been given a few jabs, and not very delicately. 'He's the most horrible human being I've ever met, but probably the best physician in the country.'

A shrewd looking man in a lab coat, with dark hair and eyes scowls at them.

'Don't downplay it,' he drawls, 'The best in the world, at least, considering I've got the most credentials in both human and non-human biology.'

'Pretty sure Dr Malohkeh might argue with that.'

Harper snorted dismissively. 'He doesn't count.'

'Because he's Silurian?'

'No, because he's in the arse end of nowhere,' Harper retorts, sizing up the Doctor. 'You're a doctor, then? PhD, I'm guessing, not practical medicine. You look like you've haven't seen the outside of a library in twenty years.'

'Excuse you, you little swot, I've seen more of this universe than you could ever imagine in your undeveloped little ape brain,' the Doctor shoots back, not even bothering to curb his inner Donna just then.

Far from being insulted, Harper just snorts and then points at Rose's mother.

'You're to keep me updated on your condition. I want to hear from you every four hours for the next two days. You miss one call, and I'll have you put in quarantine.' Jackie begins to protest. 'And before you say I can't do that, I have clearance from people much higher than your husband when it comes to health and safety issues. You don't like it, bring it up with the President at your next soiree.'

At this point, Jackie lets out a wordless growl and stalks from the room, followed by a beleaguered looking Pete. She isn't the only one speechless; the Doctor is now actively gaping. He's never seen anyone put Rose's mother in her place like that.

Pete pauses at the door. ''When you're done, I need you two up in my office. We need to sort out a name for you, Doctor.'

'Leave him alone, Dad, he's got a name,' Rose says, though the Doctor thinks it's more of an inherent need to believe he is the same man. Not because she cares one whit about his name. She's had difficulty saying it since they arrived here, after all.

'I know he's got a name,' Pete retorts. 'The same way you have a name. Doesn't mean he doesn't need something to stick on a driver's license or a birth certificate in case some dogged pap decides to go digging into who he is. We can't let him leave Torchwood until there's a proper identity set up.'

'Sorry, did you say "let"?' the Doctor returns with a mild civility. As if this place could keep him contained if he decided to leave it.

'That's not what he meant, and you know it,' Rose interjects. 'We'll be there, Dad.'

Pete nods and leaves the room.

'Well, come on,' Harper grumbles. 'Haven't got all night, you're up next. Is Mr Mouth there staying or going?'

'Er –'

'He can stay if he wants,' Rose says, sounding only a bit hesitant. 'It's not like I need to take off any clothes for this.'

'Much to my dismay,' Harper quips.

'You want to stop talking now,' the Doctor states pleasantly.

'Hmph,' is the only response he gets, but the man carries out Rose's check-up in silence.

The Doctor can't get over how uncomfortable he is with all of this. Sitting in Torchwood like it's nothing…following someone else's lead instead of making the rules up as he goes.

The Silurian thing has shaken him a bit.

It's not that he's entirely surprised at a significant population of _homo reptilis_ on Earth. Human-Silurian relations are one of those temporal tipping points. Pivotal moments in history can be a turning point, a crossroads in time, and that's one of them. But he is surprised it didn't end in either human or Silurian extinction. Neither species likes to share, and it's a rare case when everybody lives.

He puts that down to Rose.

Then there's the fact his body doesn't feel like _his._

He's been through the regeneration process enough to know it will take some time to get used to, but he shouldn't have to get used to anything. This is literally the same body as the other one, has all the same quirks and physical characteristics. It feels the same as it always did, only there's a tiny, nagging sense of wrongness. He feels too tall, too solid, too gangly and unwieldy. Almost like his entire center of gravity is off.

Possibly it's the one heart thing, but he doesn't think that entirely covers it.

'Right, you're done,' Harper says after about a half-hour of checking bloods and physical responses. 'Your turn, _professor_.'

' _Don't_ call me that,' the Doctor says immediately, his voice low and dangerous. There's only one person in the universe who gets to call him that, and it's definitely not this surly little twit.

Harper blinks, looking a bit taken aback. Something uneasy flickers across his face, before he scowls even harder and snaps, 'Well, whatever you call yourself. Get your arse over here so I can check you out. Some of us have lives to get back to.'

'You mean the kind of life where you need to get checked for STIs every month or so?' Rose asks with false sweetness.

'Hilarious. And none of your business,' Harper says. To the Doctor, he adds, 'It's standard protocol for anything with a non-Earth origin to be catalogued and processed. We don't make exceptions, even if you're the boss's daughter's…whatever.'

'Shut up, Owen.'

'Anything of non-Earth origin?' the Doctor repeats blankly.

'It's true,' Rose says quietly. 'Even Mum and Mickey and me have a file.'

'But you're from here.'

'Yeah, but not _this_ here,' she reminds him. 'It's a safety thing. This Earth is still very touchy when it comes to aliens, so there's a lot of procedure to follow to keep us safe.'

'Because bagging and tagging anything remotely different is _safe_ ,' the Doctor sniffs.

'That's not what we do!' Rose shot back. 'We're just trying to keep the people of this planet safe. You never know if there's some alien virus carried here by spacecraft or if a certain species' skin oils can cause a plague epidemic. We've made a lot of mistakes in the past not screening those aliens who ended up here, and we've lost a lot of lives trying to come to peaceful arrangements with the ones who didn't just land here on accident.'

'So you're saying no one's catalogued the Silurian population and registered them?'

'Not in the same way,' Rose replied. 'Their healers and scientists, as well as ours, have only just ended the quarantine to ensure neither species has diseases that might kill the other. Only a few hundred Silurians have relocated above ground just yet, but once they do they'll have the same rights and protections that humans do. Which means that wherever they settle, they'll be subject to the laws of that area. Human and Silurian.'

'The answer's still no,' the Doctor states. He's unsure how his new body functions and he doesn't trust Torchwood to react well to his possibly half-alien physiology. No species is equipped to deal with Time Lord genetics. Humanity might have made great strides in this universe, but this isn't something he's willing or able to bend on.

Rose or no Rose.

'Sorry, mate, it's not really a choice,' Harper says. 'You submit to testing, or you get locked up. Either way, I'm going home in an hour.'

'I'm not stopping you. Go on – bye,' the Doctor chirps, and looks to Rose for support.

She seems torn, biting her lip uncertainly.

'I hate to agree with him, but it is protocol,' she says slowly.

He feels betrayed.

The Doctor is so used to a Rose Tyler that trusts him without question, that this is a blow. He can't help think that if it was the Other asking her to back him up, she would without a second thought.

He is furious at this, and the angry, shouty Donna part of him is coming up with a whole list of ironclad reasons why having any of his biological data on record is a bad idea. Well-thought out reasons, long diatribes on Time Lord biology and how dangerous even a few odd skin-cells can be in the hands of an enterprising human. He doesn't know this body's capabilities or deficiencies himself. There's no one getting their hands on it until at least after he's figured those out. If ever.

But instead of that, he feels the deadly sort of calm, something similar to the cool fury he felt moments before destroying Harriet Jones' prime ministerial career.

He's always known the exact right thing to say, the best way to hurt her, and he's always avoided doing so, but there's something so very human in him now. A part of him that wants to lash out at the thing or person hurting him.

'If it's alien, it's ours, is that it, Rose?'

The minute the words are out of his mouth, he regrets them.

Pain and disbelief and anger war for supremacy on her face, before an icy calm settles. He recognises it as her version of his own calm fury.

'You don't get to say that to me,' she tells him with quiet menace. ' _Ever_.'

It hits him right then how terrifying Rose Tyler can be and how maybe, just maybe, his other self is right to be afraid of her.

Just as quickly, her expression clears and she turns to Harper with pursed lips.

'Hold off on the physical for now,' she tells him.

'You and your mother don't listen, do you? I've got –'

'Higher clearance, yes, I heard,' Rose cuts him off crisply. 'But considering this man is the reason we still have a universe to live in, you're going to have to wait until he's ready to submit to testing. He has a right to decline a physical –'

' – by waiving his rights to leave the building,' Harper snaps. 'No physical, no freedom. We've got a quarantine wing set up specifically for this.'

'Higher level Torchwood employees can vouch for any individual in certain cases,' Rose reminds him. 'Even Harriet Jones agreed to that in special cases, and I'm sure the Director will speak for him once he's explained himself.'

She gives the Doctor a look that promises consequences if he doesn't.

'Fine,' Harper bites out. 'But your father will be hearing about your angling for special treatment.'

'Well, it wouldn't be the first time,' Rose shoots back and motions for the Doctor to leave the room.

'Absolutely horrible to meet you,' he tells Harper. 'Hopefully we won't do it again – bye!'

They head back to the lifts.

'Thank you,' he says as the doors close on them.

'Don't,' Rose tells him shortly. Her eyes snap in anger. 'You might be used to getting around protocols and rules because you're the Doctor, but I spent ten years toeing the line of the annoying bits like this so I couldn't be accused of having special privileges. And now that I pulled that card, I won't be able to do it again. I understand you have your reasons – a drop of blood could change the history of the world, I remember – but you're going to have to learn to choose your battles. Starting with accepting that Torchwood here is not Torchwood back home. There are actual reasons for our rules and they're to keep people and aliens safe. Nothing more, nothing less.'

The doors open and she strides out, leaving him staring at her back for several seconds. Rose's no-nonsense demeanour is foreign to him, and though he thinks he may have handled the whole interchange poorly, he is still caught off-guard by her fury.

With nothing else to do, he staggers out after her, banging into the closing doors on his way.

There are a few seconds of silence between them, and it's on his lips to apologise until he remembers Jackie's directive to stop that. Instead, he tries to change the subject.

'What'd Pete mean before? About me needing a name, same as you?'

'Well, I popped into existence out of nowhere, didn't I?' she replies. 'And Pete and Mum are well-known here, so I couldn't just be Rose Tyler. They had to come up with a whole new identity for me.'

'So you aren't Rose Tyler?'

'I am now. I wasn't when I first showed up. All of the fake records I have – the ones the paparazzi goes digging through – list me as Marion Rose.'

'That's not very imaginative.'

'I know, yeah? Anyhow, the official story here is that Mum and Dad couldn't have kids, so they hired a surrogate. Only she decided to run off after she had me and didn't take the money cos she didn't want it traced. I was raised on a council estate and then she died when I was little, so I ended up in foster care,' she recites. 'I got into some trouble when I was a teenager, and when they took my fingerprints and DNA it matched Pete and Mum's, which is how they found me.'

'It sounds like an episode of Corrie,' the Doctor says, awed.

'They don't have that here,' Rose tells him.

'No!'

'EastEnders either. I don't know how Mum's survived…'

He trails her into a spacious, handsome office.

Pete Tyler is just hanging up the phone.

'That was Dr Harper,' he says in a disapproving tone. 'I hope I don't have to give you a warning about compromising your impartiality because you've got the Doctor back, Rose.'

'I'm not compromising anything,' she retorts. 'I'm sure you got the gist of what happened despite Owen's complaining. The Doctor always has his reasons.'

He knows that's not faith in him, causing her to say that, but lingering faith in the Other. If she sounds a bit stiff, the Doctor puts that down to still hurting over whatever reasons led to her being stranded back here.

'I'd like to know what those are,' Pete says, frowning at the Doctor. 'And as soon as possible, if we're to set create identification for him.'

'Can't I just use the psychic paper?' the Doctor asks, reaching into his pocket. When his fingers close around nothing, he feels the color drain from his face. 'Oh! I don't have it anymore! That tosser, he kept it!' Another, more horrible idea occurs to him. 'Oh, and the coat! Rose, he's got the coat! Janice Joplin gave me that coat!'

'Who's Janice Joplin?' Pete asks, while Rose rolls her eyes.

' _Who's Janice Joplin_?' the Doctor repeats, scandalised. 'How have you not heard of – oh, don't tell me she doesn't exist here!'

'Most classic rock doesn't exist here,' Rose tells him. 'The music revolution never happened here.'

'Never – what do you mean, _never_?!' he squeaks.

Pete clears his throat. 'Can we get back to the priority? You need a name.'

'I'm the Doctor.'

'Yes, we know that, but we need something to put onto an NI application. I doubt you want to be registered as a landed alien immigrant.'

'John Smith?' Rose suggests. It's the identity he's always used before. 'Or – what was that other one you used? Dr James…the Scottish one.'

'McCrimmon,' he says tensely.

It hits him how much his life is about to change. There's not much more domestic than mandatory physicals and being bailed out of arguments by his – whatever Rose is to him. Now, he's being forced to get a drivers' licenses and NI number? For what, so that he can always be identifiable, always traceable?

He might as well be living under constant surveillance by these people, whatever Rose believes about Torchwood.

Anxiety and panic begin to flow through him and he suddenly feels a desperate need to escape.

'Right, well – can we put this on hold for a mo'?' he asks cheerfully. 'Need a trip to the loo – these human bodies, so inefficient when it come to waste management.'

He's backing out of the room.

'Doctor –' Pete begins.

'Won't be a moment!' he lies blithely, and ducks out.

He gets out of the room as soon as possible, and doesn't wait to see if Rose intends to follow him or not. He is in the lift and the doors are closing when she calls his name, but he doesn't move to stop them.

When he gets to the main floor, there's an alarm sounding and he breaks into a sprint. A dark-haired, good looking man with an athletic build tries to stop him, but the Doctor is still fast even if this body is new. He will always be a champion runner, and he's out of the building with barel a thought.

He disappears into the night, with no idea where he's going or why or what he's going to do. He's just desperate to escape, and this is doing that the way he always had: by running away.

For the first time since his creation, he experiences a brief moment of _freedom_.

And he's not ready to let go of it just yet.

∙ ΘΣ ∙

Rose only finds him hours later.

Given everything that's happened today, she doesn't know why she didn't think to look here right away. When she found herself marooned in this universe the first time, she spent her early months inexplicably drawn to certain places that echoed her old life.

The empty tract of land that held the Powell Estate back home, the chippy in Dagenham which was an appliance shop here, the warehouse that stood where Jericho Street Comprehensive should have been, the cemetery where Peter Tyler should have been buried but wasn't…

There are places and people that Rose inevitably ran into again in this world without even trying. Given what she knows of his creation that obviously applies to him now too.

His lanky frame is hunched over the tombstone, hands in pockets, unmoving.

Rose knows who it belongs to, having been here a few times with her team. The body was exhumed once to gain the baseline data needed to find Donna Noble in the other universe. Rose fought up until the last minute against having to do so, but was forced to give in when no other alternative presented itself.

There's a beautiful marble monument there now, a gift to the Noble family for allowing the exhumation. Torchwood could have just gone in and dug her up, but Rose refused to do that to Donna's family. She personally met with them to explain the situation and how important it was.

'She saved the world,' Rose whispers, trying to keep her voice steady although she's spent the last hour running wherever she could think of finding him. 'That was before I got here. Before Torchwood was even…' She trails off when she sees him flinch at the name, and changes tracks. 'Back in the Preacher days, when Mickey and Jake were savin' the world from a van. They thought they'd stumbled upon another Cyber factory deep under London. Instead, they found this… spider thing –'

'Racnoss,' he says dully, and Rose doesn't ask how he knows the name she's only seen in reports.

'Yeah… Mickey said it had this woman there, locked up and half-starved. A glowing woman. The spider had done something… was gonna use her to wake up all her kids and devour the planet or something. The only way to stop it was to blow everything up, and with the size of the blast, they weren't going to survive. But…'

'Donna did it,' the man in the blue suit finishes.

Rose nods even though he can't see it. 'They said Donna woke up. Made them give her the charges, told them she'd wait until they got out. Mickey and Jake only just made it.' She swallows. 'Donna almost did, too. The blast didn't kill her –'

'She drowned in the Thames,' he finishes dully, hands clenching.

'I'm sorry,' she offers sincerely. 'But if not for Donna, this planet would be dead. And I'd never have made it back.' The jury is still out on whether that's a good thing. 'I kept running into her on dimension jumps. No idea who she was, or why. Didn't find out her name 'til I described her to a sketch artist, and then Mickey and Jake told me the story. Once we had a name…'

Rose trails off because that story inevitably leads to telling the Doctor about the alternate reality where she effectively killed the other woman.

She doubts either of them can handle that right now.

'I'm sorry for what happened back there,' she says, nodding in the general direction of Torchwood. 'You had no right to say what you did…but I wasn't at my best either. You say you're him…and he would have been just as against all this as you, and I would've accepted it. It took me about three seconds after you left to realise, but by then you'd left. I thought I'd lost you again.' When he still doesn't speak, Rose's shoulders give and the tension that's been holding her together all day lets go. 'Then again… never really had you to begin with, did I?'

'Rose –'

'No. I should've known,' she continues furiously. 'The Doctor wanted nothing remotely domestic. Why should you? Doesn't matter even if you are part-human, you don't want to be here and… and it's my fault.'

Her voice finally breaks, and she can't fight back the heaving sob. He makes no move to hug her, though, the way his double might have.

But he frowns like she's said something perplexing. 'How can this possibly be your fault?'

'Don't you see?' Rose gulps. 'If what you said was true – all that bit about Bad Wolf and the Time Vortex. If I did all of that to you and Jack and saw everything and had all that power… then I must've seen this! I saw the Doctor leaving us here, and I let it happen! Which means, I knew you would be trapped here and didn't do anything to fix it!' Tears stream down her cheeks now, refusing to be wiped away. 'It's my fault. I've ruined your life.'

He is watching her cry, stricken and confused and the slightest bit horrified.

'I wish he had taken you with him,' Rose continues after a long moment. 'On the TARDIS. If he was going to leave me here anyway –' He looks away at this and she knows she's guessed right. '– I know what it's like to live without the TARDIS and… and without the Doctor. I learned I could do it. I can survive. But you… you don't know how to do that, do you?'

He still isn't talking, and the longer the quiet continues the more aware she is of the truth looming over them. It's overbearing and painful, and she doesn't want to deal with it anymore.

Rose turns away from the man and the grave beside him, staring up at the empty night sky.

'Maybe you should go,' she muses out loud. 'Do what you always do – or, well, whatever makes you happy.'

There's a shift of movement behind her, and she imagines he might actually be staring at her now that he doesn't have to meet her gaze. This man might not be her Doctor, but he's a living breathing creature with thoughts and feelings and memories of being the man who needs to keep moving. Staying here will keep him from that, and so there's one last thing she has to do.

'What you said before, on the beach. I won't hold you to it,' she goes on. 'I asked a question, and you answered it. I'm the one that… never mind.'

Rose doesn't want to remember the kiss. Already knows it will haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. So she squares her shoulders and begins to walk away.

'There's no point for both of us to be miserable because some prat decided not to give us a choice,' she concludes, more to herself than him.

Every step away from him makes her heart constrict, but she forces herself to continue. She's said her piece and is giving him the freedom he needs to run away as he always does. Rose wonders if he realises what she's offering him, what she's finally letting go of for his sake.

She wonders if he even cares.

There's a temptation to turn around, to see if he's taken her up on the offer and disappeared into the night and out of her life for good. She bites her lip and clenches her eyes shut as if to stop herself from giving in and turn around.

Rose knows seeing him disappear into thin air once more will defeat her, and so she soldiers on.

 _One foot at a time, one step and then another_ , she coaches herself.

So she's more than surprised when a hand loops through hers, and then he's beside her again.

His eyes are dark and sad, reflecting her own grief and loss back to her. But his mouth has quirked a bit, close to the expression she remembers when he's about to embark on trying to cheer her up.

'I've had all the other adventures already,' he tells her, the weariness of past years colouring her words. 'There's only one I want to try at the moment. With you. If you'll let me.'

Rose's fingers still feel stiff in his grasp. When her mouth parts to reply for a moment she isn't sure if she intends to protest or accept his gesture.

With considerable effort, she musters up a small smile, one she suspects is as pained and untrue as his. It's little more than the mark of years and disappointments gone by, but it's something.

'Better with two?' she suggests, and there's the faintest trace of hope there. Marked by bitterness and pain, but still hope.

It's all either of them have left.

'I've thought about it, and I'm considering a name,' he tells her, à propos of nothing as they head out of the cemetery. Rose tries not to notice he's let go of her hand and is bouncing a few steps ahead of her. 'As a favour to your dad. No other reason.'

'You mean a pre-emptive favour,' Rose suggests. 'Pretty sure you're gonna cause him and the rest of Torchwood a lot of troubles.'

'Trouble? Me? Never,' he dismisses.

'You're such a liar.'

'I am not! I'm the most honest person there ever was! Candid, even, some people would call it. With a whole extra helping of blunt, now that I've got some of Donna's genes. I always tell the truth, except when I don't,' he declares. His tone is the familiar, jokey one that ten years ago she would have laughed off and chalked it up to silly quirks.

Now it's just cold, hard reminder.

He seems to understand he's put his foot in it again, because he sighs and rubs at his ear.

'We'll get better at this,' he assures her. Rose can't help hearing the _"we have to"_ he refrained from adding.

'What name did you decide on?' she asks; her turn to change the subject.

'Noble. Donovan Noble.'

This time when she smiles it doesn't feel as forced. 'I like it. Think Donna would've too.'

'Nah, she'd call me a sentimental plum for my troubles.'

'Well, you're that, too.'

They are still neither of them relaxed, and their banter isn't as comfortable as either remembers, but it's a start. They will get over this.

And this time it's her that thinks ruefully that they have to.

∙ ΘΣ ∙


	4. Chapter Three - The Doctor

**Author's Note: Recognizable dialogue come from _Journey's End_. I'll do final edits and put together a banner later.**

* * *

 **THREE**

'You shouldn't have done that.'

Donna's voice is reproachful as she follows the Doctor into the TARDIS, shutting the door on Bad Wolf Bay and everything it represents.

'Yes, I should,' he replies shortly, striding to the console. He reaches for a lever to prepare them for take-off. Maybe if he pretends well enough, he can ignore the fact his hearts are breaking all over again. 'You know where we haven't been in a while? The Mestophelix Galaxy –'

There's no distracting Donna, of course. Even before she had a Time Lord's focus, she was relentless.

'None of that, Spaceman! You know as well as I do there's no real reason to live Rose or _him_ behind.'

'He committed genocide!'

'So have you! For the same reason! And what about Rose, hm? You're cutting her off from her home universe - you know how dangerous that could be - !'

'The dimensional retroclosure will iron out any inconsistencies in both universal timelines.'

'Yeah, I know that, but that doesn't mean –'

'And what would you have me do?' he snarls, whirling away from the controls on the console and glaring over at her. 'Bring her and leave him? Separate Rose from her family and the life she's built? Or bring them both? Watch them both live out their happy lives? Or are you envisioning some sort of time share before I watch them both die?!'

'Oi! Don't you take that tone with me,' Donna barks back, not cowed by him in the least. 'I know exactly what you're thinking – every thought – cos it's in my head too. And I get your reasons, I just think they're utter bollocks.'

'Donna –'

'No! You had the love of your lives back in your arms! And you've been planning to put her back here from the minute you saw her again, haven't you? Even if you didn't split yourself in two on accident! All for some misguided martyr ploy to keep her safe! Or not having to watch her wither and die, whatever,' she finishes, tone derisive. 'You're just being a coward! And you didn't even give her a choice!'

He opens his mouth to protest. 'Of course I gave her a –'

'Choosing between two of you isn't a choice, and you know it! And when she calms down enough to figure that out, it won't matter that she's with the other you, she's going to hate for you for it.'

'Maybe that's for the best,' the Doctor murmurs, more to himself than Donna.

She hears it, though, because her voice goes all shrill and she demands, 'How could that ever be best?'

There are entire treatises on the subject that she would understand if she felt like digging a bit deeper into her new brain. Not that he would recommend that. The exact opposite, actually. He knows he doesn't have much time with Donna as it is, and spending that time arguing is the last thing he wants to do.

'Donna, can we just…not?' he finally says, the energy going out of him.

She must sense something in his tone, because she sighs.

'Fine. I'll let it go,' she says, but her tone conveys the unspoken _for now_.

If thing were different, he would be worried about that tone. He would fully expect a long rant on the subject, possibly a slap and the very definite not-end to the conversation. Because two Time Lords with access to Time Lord technology could definitely figure out how to traverse parallel worlds now, and with Donna's forceful nature…

 _Time to run_ , he thinks, as Donna takes her place on the other side of the TARDIS console and he begins to dematerialization sequence.

Within seconds the ship is moving, but minus the rocky ride that usually characterizes his travels. Without the fate of reality hanging in the balance, their movements are more controlled and graceful, and it's a smoother trip than he can remember in a long time.

The Doctor wants to cry in frustration at the absolute joy he feels, piloting his magnificent ship with someone who knows what they're doing. Someone so in sync with his thoughts as to anticipate the next directions without having to give it.

They bring the TARDIS into the Vortex, letting her idle for a little bit after the strain of towing twenty-seven planets. The Doctor moves away from the console, meandering toward the door that no longer has Rose Tyler and his counterpart on the other side, feeling a familiar heaviness in him.

Leaning against one of the coral struts, he glances back at where Donna is toggling the view screen on the console. He can feel the effort she is putting in to not revisiting the subject – already the process has started, if she can't keep her mental shields up, and he swallows.

'I thought we could try the planet Felspoon,' she announces, clasping her hands behind her back, and he finds himself nodding slowly. 'Just cos. What a good name, Felspoon. Apparently it's got mountains that sway in the breeze. Mountains that move. Can you imagine?'

She twists a dial.

'And how do you know that?' he asks, careful to keep his tone neutral.

'Because it's in your head. And if it's in your head, it's in mine.'

'And how does that feel?'

'Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto bene! Great big universe, packed into my brain. You know, you could fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hotbinding the fragment links and superseding the binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary – binary –'

His hearts clench and he makes a move toward her, but she takes a deep gulp of air.

'I'm fine!' she insists, looking away. 'Nah, never mind Felspoon. You know who I'd like to meet? Charlie Chaplin. I bet he's great. Charlie Chaplin. Shall we do that? Shall we go and see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin?' She picks up the phone on the console, hangs it up again. 'Charlie Chester. Charlie Brown. No, he's fiction – Friction – fiction – fixing – mixing – Rickston – Brixton –' She gasps again and clutches the console, bent over with her shoulders heaving. 'Oh my God.

'Do you know what's happening?' he asks. It takes everything he is to keep himself sounding detached, to not go to pieces in front of her the way he desperately wants to.

Donna straightens, and says in a defeated voice, 'Yeah.'

'There's never been a human Time Lord metacrisis before now. And you know why.'

'Because there can't be,' she replies, devastated.

She won't look at him, instead fiddling with a lever on the TARDIS. He knows she's just trying to hold herself up in the wake of what they both know is about to happen. 'I want to stay.'

'Look at me –' The Doctor leans closer, trying to catch her eye, but she is resolute in her avoidance. 'Donna, look at me.'

She finally does, her shoulders slumping the slightest bit. 'I was gonna be with you. Forever.'

'I know.'

'The rest of my life,' she almost whispers. 'Travelling, in the TARDIS. The Doctor-Donna.'

There's nothing he can say to this, because they both know that no one gets to be with him forever. Not his friends, not his family, not –

He cuts that thought off before it can take root.

And even worse than that knowledge, is the knowledge that Donna's one of the unlucky few who won't even get to remember it all.

She gasps and staggers, knowing what he's thinking. Whether it's the telepathy or having reasoned out the conclusion herself, he's not entirely sure.

'No! Oh my God!' she gasps, taking a shaky step away from him even as he steadies. 'I can't go back! Don't make me go back! Doctor, please, please don't make me go back!'

Every word feels like a brand, but he forces himself to reign in what he's feeling. If it spills over now, the emotional bleed-through might render her braindead.

Possibly a mercy compared to what he's about to do.

'Donna – oh, Donna Noble, I am so sorry,' he tells her, trying to ignore the way she's looking at him like he can fix all this. They always look at him like that, but he thinks today that look might actually kill him. 'But we had the best of times.'

'No…'

'The best,' he insists as tears run down her cheeks. He wants her to know that in her heart even if she won't know it in her head. 'Goodbye.'

He raises his hands to her temples, already reaching into her mind.

'No, no, no – please! Please, no – no!'

Flashes of her life sizzle through both their minds as he reaches for her memories, a fluid montage of their best and worst moments together. The faces of people they've saved and lost, and planets that remain in the sky because of her. He promises her that he will guard those experienced, keep them safe and cherish them for both of them.

But when he goes to remove them, he finds that they stubbornly remain there. The metacrisis ensured that even as they are burning her up from the inside, her thoughts and memories retain the durability of a Time Lady's. The Doctor won't be able to remove them permanently, take them into himself to protect them as he had intended.

He finds himself selfishly relieved at that. He won't have to completely murder his friend after all.

Just irrevocably cripple her.

And so he gathers the memories and thoughts and experiences all together, shaping and fitting them together, compressing them into a manageable proportions. As long as they aren't accessed, they will remain in this state. He packs them far away in her subconscious mind, into a part of her brain that humans don't have access to – and won't, for millennia yet.

Long after Donna Noble is dead and gone.

He buries it all beneath layers and layers of inconsequential thoughts and last minute things to check, building up as many protections as he dares with her already injured psyche. It's still significant, for a human brain, and her mind might as well be wiped for all the wards he creates.

As the last one slips in to place, Donna manages a last, desperate, 'No!' and then goes limp.

He catches her as she falls forward, and for a moment just holds her.

'I'm sorry,' he whispers, brushing her hair back from her face. 'I'm so, so sorry.'

It's harder than it should be, lifting her up and settling her on the jump seat so that he can key in the new coordinates.

The TARDIS creaks and rumbles, almost in protest, but they make it back to London without incident. She might not like it, but she knows the sooner they get Donna off the ship and out of his life, the safer she will be.

It's pouring rain when he opens the door, and he shifts Donna's face into his chest to keep the water off. It wouldn't do for her to wake just yet.

They've landed across the road from the Nobles' home, and it should be nothing for him to cross the street to bring her there. The Doctor's knees give out, though, a psychosomatic response to the turmoil in his head, and they crumble in a heap outside the front door.

He's close enough to knock, though, and within seconds the door is wrenched open and Wilf is staring down, his excitement turning to dread in an instant.

'Help me,' the Doctor commands.

'Donna?' her grandfather murmurs. ' _Donna_?'

Between the two of them they get her up the stairs and onto her bed. She shows no sign of waking, but the Doctor knows it won't be long before she does. He needs to leave.

But he owes her family an explanation. He's broken apart countless families without explanation, left parents wondering where their child was because it wasn't important enough to him to give them answers.

He will not do that to his best friend's family.

Thunder rolls overhead as he sits Donna's mother and grandfather down to tell them the terrible news.

'She took my mind into her own head,' he finishes after giving them a quick version of everything that happened in the Medusa Cascade. 'But that's a Time Lord consciousness. All that knowledge, it was killing her.'

'But she'll get better now?' Wilf asks, barely containing the tremble in his voice.

'I had to wipe her mind completely. Every trace of me, or the TARDIS. Anything we did together, anywhere we went, had to go.'

'All those wonderful things she did…'

'I know…but that version of Donna is dead,' he declares, and the finality of those words visibly pains them. He leans forward, lowering his voice. 'Because if she remembers, just for a second, she'll burn up. You can never tell her. You can't mention me or any of it for the rest of her life.'

'But the whole world's talking about it!' Sylvia protests as Wilf shakes his head in denial. 'We travelled across space!'

'It'll just be a story. One of those Donna Noble stories, where she missed it all again.'

'But she was better with you!' Wilf objects, tears in his eyes.

The Doctor's hearts clench again, and a part of him wants to deny that. No one is better with him.

Sylvia Noble seems to agree. 'Don't say that!'

'No, she was!' Wilf isn't having it. He's never been one to mince words or pander to anyone's sensibilities. Just like Donna.

The Doctor thinks he's going to miss that the most.

'I just want you to know,' he tells them, 'there are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her. That there are people living in the light, and singing songs of Donna Noble, a thousand million lightyears away. They will never forget her, while she can never remember. And for one moment, one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe.'

'She still is,' Sylvia informs him, iron in her words. 'She's my daughter.'

'Then maybe you should tell her that once in a while –'

There's a slam of the door, and Donna barges in, furious. 'I was asleep! On my bed, in my clothes like a flippin' kid, what'd you let me do that for?!' She barely offers the Doctor a glance, and he shifts to keep from making eye contact. 'Don't mind me. Donna.'

He purses his lips and stands, offering her a hand, which she takes without looking at him. 'John smith.'

'Mister Smith was just leaving,' Sylvia remarks, but Donna isn't listening. She's off in her own little world, the insular existence he remembers from their first encounter.

'My phone's gone mad,' she informs them, as if that's the best news she's heard all day. 'Thirty-two texts. Veena's gone barmy, she's sayin' planets in the sky! What have I missed now?' She turns and disappears back into the hall without a backwards glance. 'Nice to meet you.'

Even though he was expecting it, the complete non-recognition feels like a knife to the gut. He swallows, setting his jaw to keep from saying anything, to keep from calling out to her to come back.

 _It's done, it can't be changed, move on._

'As I said,' Sylvia says firmly, the icy intensity of a mother protecting her child filling every syllable, 'I think you should go.'

He knows she's right, but he can't seem to find the energy to take the first step. The one that will take him out of the sitting room and to the front door, back to the TARDIS and out of Donna's life.

He half expects Wilf to insist he stay, to beg him for another solution to the problem, but the old man is too stunned to try.

It's this that finally prompts him to move, and he makes his way out of the sitting room. His feet feel like they're made of lead, and in so many ways this is harder than leaving Rose behind. Rose Tyler will be brilliant no matter what happens, and she'll always know it. She'll always remember their adventures and now that she has her own version of him that can make him happy…well, those two get the easy life, don't they?

But this, this loss is horrible. A strong, amazing, brilliant woman died today, all because she had the rotten luck of knowing him.

The Doctor's double might be a genocide, but the Doctor's complicity in Donna Noble's demise is by far the greater sin.

He can't help stopping into the kitchen one last time before he leaves.

Donna is there, puttering around the kitchen on her mobile.

'…how thick do you think I am? Planets! Tell you what that was, dumbo, that's those two-for-one lagers you gets down the offy because you fancy that little man in there with the goatee.' She closes the refrigerator door. 'Ha-ha! Yes, you do! I've seen you!'

'Donna?' he tries, telling himself he's just making sure. He indicates the door. 'I was just going.

'Yeah, see you,' she replies, barely paying attention. 'I tell you what, though, you're wasting your time with that one, because Susie Mayor, she went on that dating site, and she saw him. No, no, no, no! Listen, listen, this is important!' Her voice follows him as he leaves the house. Susie Mayor wouldn't lie! Not unless it was about calories…'

Wilf is waiting for him on the landing, still looking numb. Sylvia hasn't even bothered, and he can hardly blame her for it. She didn't like him to begin with, and now he's given her extra reason to hate him.

It's still raining as Wilf lets him out of the house, and he glances up the sky. He can't help think the weather is appropriate.

'Ah – you'll have quite a bit of this,' he remarks mildly. 'Atmospheric disturbance.' He inhales. 'Still, it'll pass. Everything does.' He glances back at the old man. 'Bye then, Wilfred.'

Donna's grandfather nods, his mouth parting like he wants to say something but can't. He only manages it after the Doctor gets a few paces away. 'Oh, Doctor?'

He turns.

'What about you now?' Wilf wants to know. 'Who've you got? I mean…all those friends of yours.'

'They've all got someone else,' the Doctor answers, and he's amazed at how level he manages to keep his voice. 'Still. That's fine. I'm fine.'

It's never been a bigger lie than right now.

'I'll watch out for you, sir.'

There's a brief moment of panic, and the Doctor insists, 'You can't ever tell her –'

'No, no!' Wilf rushes to assure him. 'But every night, Doctor, when it gets darks, and the stars come out, I'll look up on her behalf. I'll look up at the sky, and think of you.'

He's glad for the rain now, because that way Wilf won't notice the tears streaking down his cheeks.

'Thank you,' he manages, and turns to plod back to the TARDIS.

He tries to tell himself that Donna will be brilliant again without him, that she just needs one spark to show her that and he would be arrogant to think he's the only one who can give that to her.

The TARDIS is quiet when he enters, the silence ringing of wordless shock. So much has happened today, it will take them both a while to process it.

He wanders around the console, distractedly removing his sodden jacket as memories of the day finally break the shield he's been putting up against them. Hours ago, this place was filled with laughter and excitement and friendship. He was surrounded by people he loved and who loved him, and even in the direst moment, he was _happy_.

It might as well be another lifetime for how much has changed in that time.

 _You're cozy little world can be rewritten just like_ that _,_ he hears his own voice reminding him. All Northern and with a superiority-complex, and he's pretty sure that version of him wouldn't have let any of this happen.

Once more, he is the last Time Lord in the universe, with no one but the last TARDIS to see him lose his composure. Having once more abandoned his friends, the woman he loves and his other self – selves – he finally lets his control over his emotions slip. The guilt, the hopelessness, the devastation – it all washes over him, and not for the first time does he want nothing more than to forget it all.

Rose and his double might have it better than Donna, but right now, the Doctor wishes he could have traded with her. Forgetting everything seems a blessing compared to have to remember it all.

He can still feel the whimper of her consciousness where it lies dormant, where he will feel it until the day she dies. Their timelines will always be synced now, no matter where he is in the universe. He knows he will have to content himself with that and tries to tell himself it's better than nothing.

More depressing thoughts.

He gets up and moves around the console room, as if that will help him outrun them, throws open the door of the TARDIS to stare out into the cosmos. Looking for a clue where to go next.

The constellation Lupus shines reproachfully at him. The Wolf.

'None of that,' he lectures dully. 'She's gone – message over, I'm not listening to it anymore.'

He slams the door and whirls about, wiggles his fingers, balances on the balls of his feet, tries to think of anything but what's happened today and can't. Which is rubbish, because right now it's all he wants to do.

He wishes he hadn't used the chameleon arch on the Family. Usually that would be because the decision led to more death and destruction than if he'd just dealt with them right away. Right now, he would escape into a life where he can't remember in a heartsbeat.

 _Could build another one_ , he thinks. It would take a while, and considering the lack of necessary parts compatible with Gallifreyan technology, it would be dangerous.

But it would be something to do.

He's already taken a few steps in the direction of the workshop when he feels it.

A faint, very delicate tickle at the back of his mind.

Not coming from Donna.

He frowns, concentrating on it and feels the bottom drop out of his stomachs when he realises: he can still feel the other Doctor across the Void.

Muted and flat, but unquestionably present.

The sensation also shows no sign of weakening or going away, either.

It is instinct to reach out and touch that consciousness. This could be a gift, a way to check up on what's going on with Rose and his double, for days like this when he needs comfort. When he needs to know all is well.

Doubt surges up just as quickly.

 _Doesn't that defeat the purpose?_

After everything else he's put himself through today, this is like a lifeline that he wants nothing more than to cling to. But it's selfish, isn't it? Him getting to see their lives play out, but them not having the same privilege.

What if maintaining the link creates resentment between them? Donna said something about Rose hating him, and he pretended like it was something he could survive, but if he's honest he doesn't think he could. At least if she hates him now, he'll never know and can pretend for the rest of his life.

Before he can truly connect to the Other, his better judgement delivers the coup de grace.

How is he going to feel decades from now when he reaches out to him and no one answers? Or if there is an answer, but one that tells him Rose has died horribly or wasted away from old age? The other world moves faster, after all.

For the first time in all of it he considers the feelings of his other self. The Other won't want to be attached to him forever. He would likely feel the Doctor was checking up on him, never truly letting him be and always taunting him with the prospect of crossing the Void to take his happiness away.

It's what the Doctor would think if he had been the one left behind.

And so at the last second, he reins himself in and blocks off the link.

It's still there, permanent, but he won't use it.

 _It's better this way,_ he tells himself. _Cowardly or not, it's better._

If he maintained the link, it would only cause trouble for Rose and the other Doctor. They would never be free of him, never be able to heal.

He knows his own mind, and he knows how Rose Tyler thinks. She would try to rationalise a way to use the link to return to this universe. And the Other is probably just as helpless in the face of her wishes as the Doctor is, so the idiot would try.

When has the end of the universe ever stopped him when it came to making Rose Tyler happy?

He knows if it was him trapped with her, and she wanted to come back, he would kill himself trying to help her.

 _No, it's best to make a clean break_ , he decides. _On both sides._

He doesn't want to be stuck thinking of them forever either; he doesn't have the strength anymore. And so he pushes the link to the back of his mind, far away – down into the deepest recesses of himself where Susan is buries – and resolves to ignore it.

After all, he's had centuries of practice ignoring the hard bits. Maybe by the time they come back to haunt him, enough time will have passed that it doesn't hurt anymore.

∙ ΘΣ ∙


	5. Chapter Four - Pete's World

**AN: And now we commence the obligatory adjustment period, where things can be going bad one second and good the next. Both the Doctor and Rose have become very different people during their separation, and they need to learn how to coexist given that truth. Also, I'm experimenting with condensing time, something I haven't done much in my Headcanon 'Verse yet. If things seem inconsistent, it's because I'm still trying to find the right balance.**

* * *

 **FOUR**

The first few months are the hardest.

After his impromptu walkabout, the Doctor returns with Tylers to their mansion. A quick word to Pete from Rose, and all mention of returning to Torchwood is dropped for the time being.

Neither the Doctor nor Rose question Jackie when she points him towards one of the many guest rooms, or remark on its distance from Rose's room.

Everyone is tired – either emotionally or physically – and there's no mood for conversation.

The Doctor doesn't expect to sleep much, still being mostly Time Lord. He surprises himself after closing his eyes to the shadows across the stucco ceiling and opening them to bright sunlight the next morning.

According to his time sense, it's been fourteen hours.

 _Growing out of a hand is a lot of work_ , he justifies to himself, before wandering downstairs to greet the new day and his new life.

He doesn't see Rose that morning.

'She went in with Pete earlier,' Jackie explains at the breakfast table, handing him a cup of tea as he takes a spot at the table. Across from him, a sandy-haired child that can only be Rose's little brother is sopping up the mushy remains of a pancake and syrup. Unlike most children that age, instead of shyly pretending to be invisible, he watches the Doctor with brazen curiosity.

Definitely Rose's brother.

'Is there an emergency?' the Doctor asks, perking up. Trouble means something to do, at any rate. He's a bit hurt, though, that Rose didn't come get him. The hurt decreases when Jackie answers him.

'Paperwork, I imagine. Rose up and threw herself across the universe without filling out the right forms or some bureaucratic nonsense. At least that's what Pete was saying, but I'm sure there's some other official story. They never tell me too much about work. Afraid I'll worry, you know, but – _Anthony John Tyler,_ if I ever catch you at that again, you won't see the outside of your room for a week!'

The youngest Tyler, unable to scoop up the last drops of his pancake syrup with his spoon, has dealt with the difficulty by lifting his plate and dragging his small pink tongue across it. At his mother's glower, he defiantly replies, 'But I didn't waste none!'

'I don't care, you're a person, not an animal, and the only thing that gets to touch your plate is your spoon!'

'But _Mummy_!' the little sinner whines. ' _He's_ got his fingers in the jam!'

The Doctor freezes, fingers in mid-crook. Jackie makes a noise like an angry goose and grabs the jar from him.

'Tattletale,' he grumps, to which Tony sticks his tongue out at him.

Their shaky relationship is mended fifteen minutes later when the Doctor tries to optimise the toaster and ends up setting fire to the ceiling.

Tony pronounces him "so cool", while Jackie exacts revenge by taking the Doctor shopping.

'You can't go around in that suit for the rest of your life,' she informs him as she drags him to the car later. The Doctor supposes he's just lucky it's by his arm and not by his ear; she looks like she'd be talented at ear-pulling.

He protests, of course, but with Rose busy and Torchwood completely off the table for now (possibly forever), there's not much else to do.

The Doctor expects the whole thing to be a torture – he's always hated shopping, in every incarnation – but is stymied to discover he's actually _enjoying_ himself. The process of picking articles of clothing and matching outfits is therapeutic, a much-needed distraction from the more serious thoughts that hover at the back of his mind.

In the moments when he is alone and examining himself in the mirror, he can pretend he's in the wardrobe room picking out this body's new look. He's gravitated back to the jeans and trousers old Big Ears liked, albeit in much more designer styles than that incarnation went for.

The Doctor resolutely promises never to wear anything with pinstripes ever again.

As his new wardrobe continues to grow, he chats with Jackie about the celebrity gossip in their primary universe. He's not sure which is more worrying – that he's getting along with Jackie, or that he suddenly knows much more about celebrities than he ever has.

Upon returning home, he expects Rose to be around to offer comment or criticisms on his clothing choices; as usual, her opinion is the one he's worried about.

But she's not around when he gets there, and so he instead plays dinosaurs with Tony Tyler in the nursery.

The Doctor's never had much of a liking for children, his attitude toward them being decidedly Time Lord in that respect. There's only room for one pair of jammy fingers, thanks very much, and they're his. However, besides a new fondness for human offspring that he attributes to Donna, it seems interacting with young Tony allows him some measure of catharsis.

Rose's brother is a three-foot-tall whirling dervish of freckles, dimples and deviousness. He has a natural curiosity and _need_ to know how and why things work; the Doctor respects and admires that.

So much so that an hour later they're both sopping wet and he's trying to fish the soda can out of the toilet while Jackie shouts at him.

The Doctor doesn't mind, though, because being in Jackie's good books is a vaguely terrifying state of being. And it's worth the look of glee on Tony's face,

But after that they aren't allowed to play together without supervision. Which is too bad because it's easier to be around him than anyone else. The four year old is always endlessly amused by the Doctor's rambling and, unlike Rose, won't correctly interpret it as a way of pretending nothing is wrong.

If she were around.

Rose's lack of presence becomes routine. The Doctor would be bothered by it, except he isn't entirely sure what he would do or say if she was there.

 _Three years wanting to tell her every fool thought in your head, and now you're suddenly mute?_ Donna's voice chides him, but he ignores it. His discomfort around Rose isn't the worst of his problems in the long run.

For all that the Doctor constantly reminds people of his superior brain, it's having a hard time coping with the reality that is his new genetic existence. As if the one heart and one lifespan aren't enough trouble, the idea that one day he really will die sends him into a panic attack three days in.

It always seemed like such a far off _someday_ to him.

Thank Rassilon for small miracles, no one's around to witness it. By the time Jackie finds him in a broom cupboard on the second floor, he's calmed down enough to pass it off as a wrong turn to the kitchen.

Rose's mother buys it, no doubt thinking he's having an alien moment, and goes on her way.

It doesn't fill him with the same sense of smug satisfaction that pulling a fast one on Jackie Tyler once gave him. Instead, he's once again reminded of his solitude, the overwhelming isolation of being without the TARDIS.

Even Rose doesn't seem to get it, but he writes that off as her dealing with her own grief. The Doctor can't even fault her for it, because he knows she's also mourning the life that could have been.

They both believed they would spend the rest of their lives on the TARDIS. She at least had a shot at it. He knew the minute he pulled the trigger on the Daleks that he would be dropped off somewhere.

 _Only one genocide per TARDIS, and she's already got a Time Lord_ , he laments not for the first time.

Because the reality is, he's no longer a Time Lord.

This body hasn't looked into the Untempered Schism, and while he remembers the experience and the long list abilities it granted him, he no longer has any of them. His extra-dimensional awareness has been severely curtailed and his time sensitivity reverted back to that which any Gallifreyan would have. Somewhere in his body is the base genetic sequence that would allow him to become a Time Lord once more. With no way to unlock it, though, it's as much use to him as recessive genes in humans.

It still means he's far superior to most sentient species, including the billions he now shares a planet with, but still makes him feel diminished.

If the metacrisis had been triggered by the other Doctor, or if he underwent one of the forbidden genetic resurrections outlawed on Gallifrey, he might still be a Time Lord.

There's enough Donna in him to put paid to that. In fact, there's so much of her that he sometimes feels stuck in a never-ending cycle of regeneration sickness. All of her thoughts and feelings and memories are in his head, conflicting and drowning out more distant memories of the Doctor.

Other than his first night, he doesn't sleep much. It's not the Time Lord resistance to somnolence, either, but a persistent insomnia. The Doctor can't quiet his brain with all the information moving around there. It's only when exhaustion hits him that he dozes during the day, and the entire experience makes him cranky.

It isn't always just racing thoughts, either. His sideways regeneration doesn't seem to have settled yet because this body still feels wrong. He is constantly knocking things over or banging his head into doorways that he expects to be able to clear.

Eventually he retreats to his room to work on a sonic screwdriver. He tells Rose it's to avoid any more bruising of his face, but really he's bored stiff in the house and not quite ready to venture into Torchwood.

He's pretty sure she can see through that, but doesn't comment on it.

The distance between them and his self-imposed exile are good for one thing, at least, even if building a sonic is not going well. It's considerably harder to design and build without proper technological and organic components

It seems despite the universe's walls being closed, he still has a link to the other Doctor.

Time Lords always could communicate with each other across parallel universes, but that was because of their TARDISes. The Doctor suspects this link exists because he and the Other started off as the same person. It's more like an echo than a real link. He can't talk to his counterpart, having lost that ability, and he knows the Other is blocking off outright communication.

But it's a tiny scrap of what he once was, and he clings to it.

He doesn't tell Rose about it though. That's all he needs is to remind her of the other, _real_ Doctor out in the universe somewhere.

By the third week, Jackie decides that he and Rose are avoiding each other. In her eyes, the best solution is for them both to move to Rose's flat in the city.

The Doctor's not quite convinced that it's that easy, but he doesn't argue.

Suddenly, he lives in a flat near Canary Wharf with Rose Tyler.

It's marginally better than living in a house, and there are absolutely no carpets to be found, thankfully. The place spacious, but Spartan, as if Rose never spent much time here. Given her behaviour over the past weeks, he doesn't find that hard to believe, and he can't help a bit of guilt. If she's lived ten years like this, he's damaged her more than he thought.

Things improve little at first.

The Doctor and Rose continue their casual, roundabout dance as uncertain roommates. The Doctor rambles to pretend nothing is wrong, and Rose forces smiles while doing the same. They attend family dinners together, and the odd public function – he's seen his face on at least two gossip rags speculating about Rose Tyler's new beau. Otherwise they don't spend much time together.

She works every day at Torchwood, he supposes because she needs something to keep her mind off things. He locks himself in the spare bedroom – his room – in the flat to work on his sonic and pretend he is there by choice.

It's a purgatory of existence, and there are nights where he lies in bed staring at the ceiling. He assaults the link between himself and the Other Doctor with angry thoughts and accusations for leaving him here. For marooning him in this abscess of a universe with a person he doesn't know. Rose is a complete stranger to him, and it keeps throwing into sharp relief just how much of a stranger he is to himself.

And then, a month later, the first rays of light shine into his otherwise grey, zeppelin-filled world.

The Doctor is digging through the infinite pockets of his blue suit, ensuring everything is emptied out of them before he transfers them to his new brown leather jacket. There's a pile of alien and human curios on the bed, and he's sure that the waterproof matches are the last if it –

When his fingers brush something rough and porous.

A flicker of familiar warmth shoots through him, and he his single heart beats faster in hope.

He strains a bit to reach – it's gotten stuck in a loop of loose thread – but eventually he can draw out the small, mouse-sized object.

Tears fill his eyes as he cradles the beloved gift.

A piece of TARDIS coral.

The Doctor doesn't know who's responsible for it being there. Whether the TARDIS herself made sure it was in his suit before he got dressed, or if the Other slipped it into his pocket when he wasn't looking. For all he knows, Donna might have done it while everyone was distracted by her being clever.

Whatever the reason, it's a piece of his home. He's happy enough to have it that he can almost get over the disappointment of never being able to grow a full TARDIS. At least not in his lifetime, considering it usually takes a thousand years –

 _Oi, how about using that big brain to actually think?_ The Doctor's inner thoughts have sounded more and more like Donna the longer he's here, but he's learned to live with it. If he treats it like any other previous regeneration he doesn't need to worry he's losing his mind. _If we shatterfry the plasmic shell and modify the dimensional stabiliser to a foldback harmonic of 36.3, we accelerate the growth by the power of 59!_

Which… is actually a brilliant idea. He should have thought about that, really.

 _Well, I'm just brilliant_.

The Doctor's not sure if the sentiment is his or the remnants of Donna, but it doesn't matter. His mind is racing: it will still be a long time before the TARDIS is travel-ready. It won't be fully frown for fifteen or sixteen years unless he finds some other means of speeding up the growth –

But now he has something he hasn't since arriving in Pete's World.

Now he has hope.

One day he might be able to travel again, just himself and the TARDIS and –

He pauses as his thoughts immediately fly to Rose.

The Doctor can't picture wanting to travel this unknown universe with anyone else but her.

Yet the idea of telling her about the coral and of the possible future they could have fills him with trepidation. Especially considering their strained relationship now. He's not sure what reaction would be worse – her refusing to travel with him, or if she suddenly warmed to him only upon finding out about the coral.

 _No_ , he decides, _best keep mum on that for now. At least until we sort ourselves out._

And on that note, he's going to have to stop hiding from Rose and letting her hide from him, and actually attempt to talk.

Ironically, it's when he finally decides to stop running from his feelings that Donna's voice and her helpful little comments retreat to the back of his head.

∙ ΘΣ ∙

Rose is not proud of the fact it takes almost a month after Bad Wolf Bay before she stops trying to avoid being alone with the part-human Doctor. Despite coaching herself and promising to do better by him, she finds herself making excuses to go in to work on weekends or pleading a headache when he tries to initiate conversation.

The latter isn't that much of a lie, really. She hasn't been sleeping well since getting back, assaulted by night terrors and confusing dreams of golden light and haunting song. She's pretty sure it's residual guilt over everything Bad Wolf did, and so she doesn't complain about it to anyone.

As for escaping to work…it's just easier for her to think when she's away from him.

Although he's liaised with the government in an effort to close the remaining breaches, spearheading a plan that involved the Earth's satellite network and some sort of device that went _ding_!, he's been avoiding Torchwood.

She can't even blame him for it.

She's been watching him sink deeper and deeper into himself in recent weeks. Every time she opens her mouth and says something he doesn't expect or doesn't agree with, something in him closes off.

It's like she's as much a stranger to him as he is to her. Sometimes she can't help worry that he wishes she was still the foolish little chav off the estate.

The only time she gets a hint of her Doctor is when they spend time at her parents' house. He bickers with Jackie, instigates trouble with Tony and impresses Pete with his stories of adventure and time travel. Rose even manages to hold friendly enough conversations with him that makes her mother think they're getting back their old rhythm.

But then the minute they head back to the flat, the tense silence overtakes them again.

She's not sure what she's supposed to do to fix it. What she does know is that they can't keep going this.

It isn't until she hits the mat for the third time during a sparring session at work the next week that someone calls her on it.

'That's you dead three times, Tyler,' Dylan Sullivan-Stuart tells her dispassionately. 'Either do better or transfer to Vitex full time.'

Rose scowls as she picks herself up off the floor.

Dylan is one of Torchwood's best field agents. In addition to having been one of Mickey and Jake's recruits to the Preachers after Lumic and the Cybermen, he also has the distinction of being government trained before then. He's the Torchwood senior operative that taught Rose all of her own combat skills, and she's been able to hold her own with him in training for three years now.

The last time he was able to take her down so easily, she was sleep-deprived and anemic from slogging through her university exams. Today, he hasn't even broken a sweat and is frowning at her like she's disappointed him.

'One more time,' she insists.

'No,' he replies. 'You need to go home and sort out whatever's got your head muddled.'

Rose rolls her eyes. 'Trust me, home is the last place that's gonna happen.'

Dylan's expression turns to one of concern, a rare sight for people who don't know him.

Rose knows him better than most, though. Before the dimension cannon became her sole priority, they were sleeping together on and off for months.

Rose refuses to feel guilty about that.

She and the Doctor never made promises to each other before she was trapped here. The whole time they travelled together, he very adamantly kept her at arm's length. Beyond holding hands and hugs, the farthest their physical relationship ever progressed was the occasional surprising kiss.

Even then, he's the one that was always leaving her behind to flirt with trees and bubbly blondes and 18th century French courtesans. She's never been a fan of double standards, even before she became one of the United Kingdom's most eligible bachelorettes.

In ten years Rose never wavered from her feelings for the Doctor, but she isn't a nun.

Unlike some of her past suitors, Dylan never had a problem with her inability to commit to more than a few one-night stands. When their short-lived affair ended, there was no hard feelings on either side. He's actually quite taken with one of the new recruits Pete's hired – a petite hacker that actually manages to get him to crack a smile on occasion.

 _Sad to say that was my most successful relationship since being here,_ she thinks ruefully. _Including the Doctor, at the moment…_

'You still haven't talked with your bloke,' Dylan says, and it's not a question.

'Not for lack of trying,' she defends uncomfortably.

Dylan raises an eyebrow at her. 'I've seen what happens when you try. Entire universes have seen what happens when you try. D'you mean to tell me the prospect of talking to one man is harder than being stuck for an hour with a damaged oxygen tank or surrounded by hostile aliens?'

'You don't know _this_ man,' Rose grumbles.

'Saw him the first time he was here – tall, skinny guy in a blue suit, right? Looked a bit squirrelly to me. Hell of sprinter, but that's all I can say about him.'

'That's right, I heard he outran you,' Rose snorts.

Dylan bristles at that; he takes pride in being the best of the best, and he doesn't put up with just anyone beating him at something. Not unless they've earned it, as Rose has in certain cases. If the Doctor ever shows his face around Torchwood again, she has a feeling Dylan will be looking to settle the score.

'I'm not going to pretend to know what's going on with you – or to care, really,' he tells her, heading to the edge of the room to toss over her water bottle. 'But from where I'm standing, you're not doing yourself or him any favours hiding away.'

'I'm not –'

'You're hiding. Call it what it is. And deal with it, because you both have lives to live. If they're not going to be together, cut your ties now and move on. No use in you paralysing each other. Especially if it makes you useless at your job.'

With that, Dylan disappears from the training room, leaving Rose staring at the spot where he just stood.

 _He's right_ , Rose realises. One way or another, the confusing limbo that is her life with the Doctor has gone on long enough. Even if she's still not over what's happened, she has to give the Doctor a chance to live his now shorter life.

The problem is, whenever she starts talking to him she either reverts to her Torchwood persona or sounds like an utter moppet. It's hard to face the one person that can easily reduce the ten years she spent becoming more than some high school dropout.

Still, Rose squares her shoulders and spends the rest of the day and the trip back to the flat talking herself into it. If not for her, than for him.

She still hesitates outside the door to the flat, her mental preparation stuttering a bit at the imminent conversation they need to have. It hits her then, knowledge long-forgotten, that the problem with trying to rehearse anything to tell the Doctor is he never reacts predictably. For all she knows, she might say the wrong thing and he'll decide to pull another runner.

 _Well, he won't, because I've got the exit covered_ , she tells herself and forces her key through the look. She pushes open the door and –

And nearly chokes on the cloud of smoke that bursts into the hallway.

'Oh, Rose – you're home!' she hears a tight-voiced Doctor exclaim in between coughing fits. 'Bit early – sorry about the smell, it's nothing, I promise – slight mishap with the oven, nothing I couldn't sort! Come in – come in and sit down, you look dead on your feet. Never understood that saying…if you're dead, you can't exactly be on your feet, can you? Well, not unless you're a gas zombie wandering around Cardiff, eh?'

He laughs nervously, ushering her inside while trying to wave the smoke out of the flat.

Rose's brain blanks for a moment on all of her carefully planned words, and instead she manages a nonplussed, 'Doctor…what's going on?'

'What's it look like?' he demands. 'Cooking dinner!'

She blinks, lets that sink in, and then tentatively asks, 'Why?'

'Well, you're always away all day and you come home so late, foraging about for things that can't possibly be healthy. I thought – well, I'm here all day – I should try my hand at cooking. Used to be brilliant at it in my eighth body,' he boasts, and then shifts a bit nervously, eyeing the scorched stovetop worriedly. 'It's possible I'm a bit, er, rusty…but it's just like riding a bike! The sauce is a bit, erm, acidic right now –'

She raises an eyebrow at the charred remnants of a wooden spoon on the counter and thinks "a bit" acidic might be an understatement.

' – but I'll figure it out. Just change the ingredient proportions a bit and presto! Ugh. Never sayin' that again…'

Despite the slight hysteria, he's in a good mood. A genuine one and not the semi-fake front he puts on when they're around other people.

There's another puff of smoke from the pot on the stove, and he leaps forward to remove it.

'Oh! Never mind that! Forget the cooking thing – bit of a mess in here, I know – tell you what, I'll clean it all up! You go on – pour a glass of wine, have a bath – not that I'm saying you smell or anything – but you always did that after a long day. Come to think of it…so did Martha. And Donna…' He trails off and his eyes widen. 'Oh…Oh! Oh, that finally makes sense!' He beams at her, but upon noticing her bemused expression his face falls. He glances around the remnants of the kitchen and even his hair seems to deflate. 'Anyhow. I'll…just…figure something else out for supper. Erm. More edible.' He tugs on his ear and doesn't look at her. 'Sorry. Wanted all this to be…well. Look, you go on, I'll…stay out of your way.'

It seems she's not the only one who's deciding to make more of an effort today, and right now, he obviously thinks his has fallen flat.

'Tell you what,' Rose says quickly before he can completely shut down. 'I'll help you clean up and we'll go get some chips. I'll even pay for 'em, like old times.'

It's the first time she's invited him to go anywhere with her that's not her parents' home or work. He's just as aware of this as she is, because he looks surprised for a moment, and then grateful for the peace offering.

He smiles and nods, and offers her the scrub brush from the sink. They set about completely scouring the kitchen (the pot has to be thrown out, and she doesn't even ask what he was trying to make in it), with him keeping up a steady stream of babble and her chuckling and offering comments whenever he takes a breath. Now that he doesn't have a respiratory bypass, it happens more often.

Her interjections become a bit more tense as time goes on, because despite waving the proverbial olive branch, she's still beyond nervous. Her worries of the past few months haven't gone, and if their little ceasefire is anything like how they dealt with uncomfortable situations before, all the tension and unspoken issues are going to be shoved under the rug. The Doctor and Rose are champions at pretending everything is alright.

She may have wanted that directly after being abandoned the second time, but neither of them can take another month of pretending.

She needs to clear the air with him, needs to make sure everything is on its way to healing.

Which explains why when he takes his next breath in the middle of a rant about the cleaning properties of Kensarf bile, she opens her mouth and blurts,

'D'you think we should maybe…see other people?'

And that…was not how she wanted to frame this conversation. Somehow, her brain has skipped past the important bits – about whether he's comfortable with who he is, or if there's any experiences he feels like he's missed out on – and gone straight to where her silly ape brain is obviously the most focused on.

He stares at her for a full minute, and she wonders if – sort of hopes, actually – she's accidently slipped into an obscure alien dialect again. The folks in R & D found one of those the week before, and the entire building spent three hours warbling and clicking at each other incomprehensibly until Tosh sorted it out.

Right now he's apparently realised she is still speaking English and was asking him a serious question, because his face falls. He clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably, and she mentally slaps herself for her stupidity.

'I-i-if you want to,' he hedges, rubbing at his ear. 'I mean, if that'll make you happy, you – why, is there someone you – ? Nope-nope-nope, never mind, I don't want to know –'

'There's no one,' she's quick to assure him. Then she decides to go the more honest route. 'I've…been there, done that over the years. Never really worked. And I'm okay with that, really. But what about you? You've never…well, I dunno what you got up to over in the other…but I mean since you've been here, you've never…I mean, you've got the memories, but…'

Oh, honestly, she's supposed to be an adult, isn't she?!

Thankfully, the Doctor seems to take pity on her.

'I'm fine with just having the memories,' he tells her quietly. 'It's not as foreign as you think. Very much like regeneration – got the memories of doing certain things, but technically this body didn't do them. But I'm not missing out on anything, if you're worried about that.'

'Yeah…?'

'Yeah...'

The way he says it, she knows he has no intention of pursuing any kind of relationship with anyone else. Rose can't help be secretly pleased at that, because the idea of seeing him with anyone else makes her sick.

And that's selfish of her, she knows, but she's still wrapping her head round it all.

He's the Doctor, but the Doctor is also in the other universe. She thinks about him every day, which makes building any kind of future with this Doctor hard. She's constantly haunted by what the fully Time Lord Doctor is doing and whether he's alright. Whether he'll be alone once Donna leaves him, or whether he'll find someone new to travel with.

'So you're…you're okay?' she asks tentatively, then frowns at her choice of words. 'I don't mean okay, I just mean –'

'I know what you mean,' he interrupts quietly.

'You've just been sort of –'

'Well, you weren't exactly –'

'I know. I'm sorry. When I was trapped here, I need time to get used to it. To being grounded. It's got to be loads worse for you, so I figured you needed space,' she murmurs, not looking at him. 'And…yeah, I was being a bit of a coward.'

'You're anything but a coward, Rose Tyler,' he tells her warmly. Then his expression turns thoughtful, and he adds, 'And you're right. I did need space. This whole thing is very new. It's not just being grounded, either.'

Rose glances up in surprise, not having expected a response from him.

In a lot of ways, this Doctor is more like her first one, in that he's very closed off about what he's thinking or feeling. She remembers that it took her months when she first started travelling with her Northern Doctor before he opened up to her about anything.

'I've been grounded before,' he continues thoughtfully. 'Spent a good deal of my third life stuck in 1960s London, if you can believe.'

'So that's why you always hated landing there,' she remarks lightly.

He shoots her a tight grin. 'Might've had something to do with it. Didn't work out too much for me in the end, though. Martha and I ended up stuck there again for three months straight. I was separated from the TARDIS then, too, but I could still feel her out there, somewhere in time and space. Like on Krop Tor.' Rose mirrors his frown at that memory. 'This time is different. I'm completely cut off.'

'It's sort of like suddenly going deaf or blind,' she remarks, earning a surprised glance. 'Or losing a limb. You can still feel it, but when you concentrate on it, it's not there.'

'Yeah…' he trails off. He seems confused.

'I felt like that the first time I was stuck here,' she tells him. It was especially bad at first; without the hum of the TARDIS, she couldn't fall asleep. It took weeks before she got used to that again. 'It's worse now, though. I guess it's cos the walls of the universes really are closed this time.'

'Right…you would notice that, I suppose…'

Rose shrugs. 'I guess. Maybe that's how all your companions feel when they get left behind.'

'I don't think so.'

'Why's that?'

'No one ever had as strong a connection to the TARDIS as you did, obviously,' he tells her. 'As for myself…I always had a bond with her. Since we got here, that's been gone. I'm all alone.' He taps his temple with a mirthless smile. 'You'd think it would be a familiar feeling by now.'

'You're not alone,' she tells him vehemently. 'There's me.'

He eyes her warily. 'Is there?'

'Well, I can't read your mind, that's true – you're gonna have to get used to actually telling me what's going on in that big Time Lord brain of yours,' she tells him with a would-be-casual shrug, 'But yeah. Always.'

His gaze softens a bit.

'Same to you,' he tells her. 'I sort of get the sense you've spent ten years bottling things up. You've got to talk to me, too.'

'Yeah, okay.' She hesitates, and adds, 'It won't happen overnight.'

'No, probably not.'

'But I'll try if you do.'

'Deal.'

'Brilliant,'

'Fantastic.'

The exchange silly grins.

'Chips?' Rose reminds him.

'Oh, God, yes, the smell in here is burning my nose hairs off,' the Doctor groans.

They make a beeline for the door to the flat.

She never does find out what put him into such good mood, but that's alright. They're talking again and that's the important thing.

∙ ΘΣ ∙

Things aren't magically fixed after that, but they're better.

Some of the unspoken resentment is gone, even if they remain tenterhooks around each other when it comes to certain subjects. He still hasn't come clean about the TARDIS coral, though, wanting to be absolutely sure of his calculations before he tells Rose.

He tells himself it's because he doesn't want to get her hopes up about things, but another part of him – the miniscule but always present part of him that's always ready to run – just wants to make sure he has an escape.

It's become more than obvious to him in the past few months that Rose has a life here. He doesn't want to take her away from everything she's built for herself and done without him.

He's already let her down so many times.

Then there's the fact he has no idea if she'll have a connection to this TARDIS, and doesn't want to get her hopes up if this doesn't work.

As such, he only really works on the coral in the hours when Rose sleeps. It's not like he sleeps much anyhow, so it's a prime time to work out the calculations needed to enhance the corals' growth and figure the optimal frequency for the shatterfrying process.

He finally agrees to take a job at Torchwood, if only because it gives him access to technologies that might be able to help the TARDIS. He tells Rose it's so he can keep an eye on the agency, make sure they're toeing the proverbial line, instead of the truth.

She buys it without question, his distrust for Torchwood more convincing than any other explanation might be.

It bothers him that their new friendship is overshadowed by untruths, but open-lines of communication or not, he's not ready for full disclosure. He hasn't even been able to tell Rose about what's happened to Donna.

The Doctor knows what his other self was going to have to do to her – what he had probably already done, maybe even before leaving Pete's World for the last time. And he's not sure he can explain to Rose what Donna means – meant – to him

He knows that she will blame herself for it when she does know, if her reaction to their abandonment at Bad Wolf Bay is anything to go by.

Working for Torchwood isn't quite as terrible as the Doctor imagined it to be. He actually has a lot more freedom than he ever had at UNIT. In fact, no one there even bothers him about trivial nonsense like paperwork or ID badges. Beyond Dr Harper's occasional reminder that the Doctor needs to discuss his medical particulars with him, or a rather odd invitation from some bloke – Stuart or Sullivan or something with an "s" – to spar in the training complex, he's left alone.

He works with an absolute brilliant little woman named Toshiko, who according to Rose is responsible for the dimension cannon. After lecturing her about the dangers inherent in breaking through dimensions, he sweeps her into a hug of thanks.

'For helping Rose,' he tells her when he pulls away, beaming at the flustered look. 'Right then! Let's get to work – ooh, I could use one of those!'

After a month of sorting through the tech in the R&D department, he's nicked enough materials to build a significantly scaled-down version of the sonic screwdriver.

His days follow a routine, which is something he's never appreciated before, but with a specific goal in mind he doesn't hate it as much as he thought he would.

The TARDIS coral is carefully nestled away in an aquarium at the bottom of the cupboard in his room, hidden away from prying eyes. Not that Rose is prying, really – she never comes into his room and diligently respects his privacy. She believes he's still working on the sonic screwdriver, and while that's not exclusively true, he doesn't correct her.

But considering who he works with, he wouldn't put it past Torchwood to have the place bugged.

On that note, he scans for surveillance technology on a twice daily basis.

Sometimes, Rose will decide he needs a distraction from his projects and propose a jaunt across town or a drive to the country to look at the stars. He always accepts, more than happy at the idea of spending time with her.

Sometimes it takes her a few tries, though.

'I said, d'you want to get a drink down at the pub?'

The Doctor blinks and glances up at her from his workbench, peering through the brainy specs that he actually needs now. Rose is lingering in the doorway to his room, her expression and demeanour suggesting a trying day at work with very little to show for her efforts.

Lucky he knows how to handle that.

'How about we just order takeaway and watch telly?' he counteroffers, putting down the mess of wires and metal bits that were once a converter cell. 'I think that film you like is coming on at seven. You know, the one with the bloke who looks like a walking Alp?'

She lets out a short burst of sound, the closest to laughter he's gotten in months. 'You know as well as I do that no one within fifteen kilometers will deliver here anymore.'

'Oi! "Fifteen minutes or free" _means_ fifteen minutes or free,' he protests. 'Not sixteen-and-a-half, not seventeen and definitely not twenty. I don't care how much margin for error there is between their restaurant clocks and ours, my time sense still works, thank you very much, and I'm not paying extra for cold food. Cheese only holds optimal melt consistency for so long.'

'You're not paying for anything,' she reminds him absently. 'And even if you were…you just don't want to admit you're a penny pincher.'

'Rose Tyler, you take that back!'

'No, really – you're a deal away from joining a coupon clipping club with Bev.'

'Oh, well, in _that_ case, I've decided I'm not hungry and you can go fend for yourself,' he sniffs.

Rose snorts again, and they share an almost grin, before a shadow crosses her expression. He knows what's caused it, too.

Once upon a time, dinner was just a matter of him setting the TARDIS to random coordinates and finding human-friendly cuisine.

They could enjoy dinner with the first pilgrims in the seventeenth century, and then hop over to the Phlarix star system and have nomi-nomi for dessert – before or after thwarting some dastardly plot or getting thrown in prison.

He thinks longingly of those days now.

Too often, their good-natured ribbing is interrupted by reality imposing itself or his newfound humanity rearing its ugly head.

Like when the seasonal flu begins going around and Pete has all employees take the most recent vaccinations cooked up by the Silurian scientists down in Torchwood Three.

The Doctor scoffs at the inoculations.

'I've still got enough Time Lord in me to not have to worry about something as silly as influenza,' he brags. 'You do too, considering you travelled in the TARDIS.'

It's hard to quantify exactly how much of him changed with the addition of Donna's DNA. Other than the single heart, the occasional verbal slip and the permanent sense of being in the wrong body, he's almost completely Time Lord. So he shouldn't be susceptible to any kind of human disease.

Still, when he catches a chill and she doesn't, she's polite enough not to say "I told you so".

The smug grin is almost worse.

'The atoms in this universe are different,' he sniffs through a stuffy nose. 'Obviously they're affecting the calibration of my _unique_ immune system.'

'Right, cos there's never been anyone else like you before,' Rose agrees as she goes to make him a cup of tea. 'Good thing, too, I think Dad would go spare if there were.'

The Doctor makes a face at her teasing.

He may have settled down significantly since being thrust into this new day-to-day-in-the-right-order kind of life, but that doesn't mean it's easy for him. He's prone to distraction at any moment in the day, and has been known to go on the occasional walkabout in the middle of the work day.

Sometimes he manages to convince Rose to skive off work with him, but as she divides her time between Vitex and Torchwood, it isn't always possible.

Toshiko becomes his somewhat reluctant partner in crime. Despite worrying about being fired, she's rather good about it all. She doesn't complain about the little things that would bother most people, like crawling through sewers or being held at gunpoint by Sevoidan arms dealer in the middle of Camden Market.

She saved his life, that time, managing to defuse the alien incendiary device while he provided a distraction.

Really, she'd make an excellent travel companion. Her only failing is the fact she's besotted with that twat, Dr Harper. Who is completely oblivious, and the only reason the Doctor hasn't pointed that out is because she can do _so_ much better than him.

If she hasn't done something stupid, like marry the idiot, once he finishes the TARDIS, he'll invite her to travel with him. And Rose, of course.

And that possible future of travel might be within reach, because the sonic is finally up to working capacity. He's tested several of the required settings, all of which have yielded good results, which means it's time to shatterfry the plasmic shell of the chunk of coral.

Rose heads off for a shopping trip with her mother one Saturday morning, and the Doctor settles in to his room with baited breath to start the process.

Except by the end of the day, he hasn't done anything but adjust the coral's position in the aquarium a few hundred times. Every time he brings the sonic closer to the coral, his hands begin to shake and he starts to feel sick.

The knowledge that he only gets one shot at this is painfully present.

If he fails, he'll have killed the only TARDIS in this universe and effectively consigned himself and Rose to a permanently sedentary existence. And as pleasant as the past weeks have been between them, he's very aware that it's a temporary fix. They can't linger in this cordial bubble forever, and when she figures out that he has nothing to offer…

On the other hand, what if he manages it and she finds out that he's being keeping this from her? She's not going to be very happy about it. If there's anything Rose hates more than people making decisions for her it's people lying. Before their separation, he always told her the truth, no matter how harsh.

He's fallen into bad habits here.

On the third hand, if he has a functioning TARDIS coral to show off rather than the burnt-out husk, she might forgive him faster.

Maybe.

Ish.

He throws up his hands in disgust at the growing list of caveats he needs to worry about, wishing for the simplicity that was his life before all this.

 _Decide to visit a planet, go there, foil evil plans, come back to the TARDIS for tea. No complications, no having to worry about other people's feelings, none of it._

Rose Tyler ruined him.

 _Oh, shut up you prawn, she's not the first person that's ever travelled with you,_ Donna's voice deadpans. _Nor the first to call you on your shite, either._

She is the first one whose happiness he's cared about in centuries, though. He'd put that down to loving her, except he doesn't.

Well, he does, but it's complicated.

He remembers what it felt like, being _in_ _love_ with her – the constant terror warring with giddiness, feeling a thousand feet tall when she smiled and like his hearts were ripping out of his chest when she cried. It's bound into his genetic makeup that he love her – this face was down to her, after all – and he does care for her.

In this whole universe, she means more to him than anyone else.

But that's all. That other feeling – the desperate, all-encompassing one that had him bar himself in Rose's room on the TARDIS for a week after she was lost to him – it's gone.

He wasn't lying to Rose when he said having the memories are enough. He doesn't want more than that, with anyone else. But he didn't exactly tell her the complete truth – that feelings and emotions aren't something you can just copy.

Memories are permanent, they leave imprints. And when you have as complete a blueprint of the mind as a Time Lord's, they transfer perfectly. Emotions, on the other hand, are either so fleeting as to be near non-existent or so all-consuming that they can't be transferred from their origin.

The Time Lord is still in possession of that terrifying, consuming love for Rose Tyler, while to the part-human Doctor, it's just an echo. Something that was once true.

Something he fervently wants to be true again, if only because he knows what she's gone through for him.

The Doctor expects he will genuinely fall in love with Rose. It's just a matter of time.

And sorting out the problems that do have solutions.

He frowns down at the TARDIS coral, which is the foremost of those right now.

Maybe a walk will help him clear his mind.

∙ ΘΣ ∙

When Rose gets home from shopping with her mother, the Doctor is not in the flat.

She doesn't question it.

He's prone to the occasional walkabout, and sometimes goes missing for hours. Once he was gone all night because he wanted to catch up on the history of this universe and got locked into British Library.

This time, though, he doesn't return by the next morning, and Rose is left wishing she'd insisted on him carrying a mobile.

She starts to get antsy by sundown the next day, calling around to anyone the Doctor spends time with, looking for information.

No one can offer her any answers.

'We were supposed build a prototype quantum slipstream drive today. When he didn't come in, I thought he was off with you,' Tosh tells her apologetically. 'D'you need help looking for him?'

'Nah, its fine,' Rose insists. 'Don't want to take you away from your work. He'll turn up. I'm sure of it.'

Except she's not, not really.

She doesn't want to give in to paranoid, insisting that he's just off doing his own thing. He just needs space.

The Doctor's spent hundreds of years jumping through space and time on a whim, it stands to reason he might do the same here on Earth.

But with every passing day that she doesn't hear from him, she gets more nervous. More worried that maybe he cracked under the pressure of this domestic, day-to-day life and just taken off.

When she peeks into his bedroom, everything appears to be just as he left it. The only questionable item is an empty aquarium, which has her scouring the flat for the next hour to make sure there's no lizard or pet mouse or giant hairy spider on the loose.

By midweek, Pete intends to put in an order to track him through the CCTV network, but she talks him out of it. Torchwood tries not to use public resources for personal matters unless in extreme circumstances, and the Doctor going missing isn't easily justifiable. More than that, considering he's technically an undocumented alien, his being outside of Torchwood's control isn't something they want to advertise right now.

Instead, she goes to Tosh and has the woman perform a clandestine search of national security footage. It's questionably legal, but Rose tends to bend the rules when it comes to the Doctor.

The search yields a result, but in a way, she wishes it hadn't.

There's footage of the Doctor boarding a train at Paddington Station on the day he went missing, a rucksack slung across his back.

Destination, Cardiff.

At first, she's confused.

Why Cardiff?

Of all places in the world he might run away to, Cardiff is the last in a long list of places she expects him to. The only reason he ever stopped there before was to fuel up the TARDIS, but considering they're grounded right now, there's no use in going to Cardiff.

He's been conversing with Dr Chaudhry and Dr Malohkeh at Torchwood Three since he got here, fascinated by the Human-Silurian peace process and offering advice on it. He might have decided to meet them in person finally.

But when she calls her opposite number in Wales, they tell her no one matching the Doctor's description has come by their headquarters.

Rose begins to worry.

Should she go after him?

It's a short trip, she can back a bag and head out there, ask around if anyone's seen him. If anyone has a chance of finding the Doctor, she'd like to think she's that person.

But then she stops herself and thinks it through.

The footage of him doesn't show him looking particularly worried or intent, as she's used to him being when he's in the middle of a crisis. And if he was going on a trip, somewhere close enough to get there by train, why didn't he ask her to come along? Why didn't he leave her a note or call her mobile or any of that?

Because he didn't want her there, obviously.

The realisation feels like a punch to the gut, and she's glad she's alone when she comes to it.

She thought they were moving forward, opening up to each other more. Apparently she was wrong.

When Rose informs Pete of the Doctor's whereabouts, he asks if they should send someone to go and get him. Rose declines, as there's no point.

If the Doctor wanted to go off without her, there was a reason. If he didn't want Torchwood to know about it, there was also a reason.

She might be hurting right now, but she meant what she told her father. The Doctor always has his reasons. His feelings for her might be unclear, but he would never do anything to jeopardise the Earth.

She exists in a state of calm, simmering fury for three more days before he comes home.

Rose isn't sure what she expects. Either the penitent prodigal returning home with a guilty expression and tired apology, or the unconcerned confusion of a man not used to following other people's schedules.

Whatever it is, it's not the chuckling creature that saunters into the flat with the swagger of someone doing a victory lap.

'Ah! Good, you're home!' he beams. 'Was worried I might not catch you before you headed to your parents' – Blimey! D'you know how hard it is to get train fare when you haven't got a pocketbook? Had to wash dishes in a Chinese restaurant for four hours before I could scrimp together enough to get back here. And that was just the train – honestly, you humans, your transportation system is severely lacking. I really do need to look into getting teleports up and running if we're going to retire the bus system any time soon…'

He's a whirlwind of energy, oblivious and unconcerned with the damage he leaves in his wake.

It's a painfully familiar picture, one she's seen before.

Memories hit her, of this face, punch-drunk and flushed, with the lingering smudges of lipstick on the corners of his lips. The condescending, patronizing gaze of an uncrowned queen looking down on her.

There's a pit opening up somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach.

'…almost had a knock-down-drag-out fight with an octogenarian for the last space on the bus, but we managed to squeeze in. Nice woman, Claudia. Tried to set me up with her grandson – nice-looking bloke, if you've got a thing for widows' peaks…' The Doctor trails off, seems to catch her expression. 'Rose? Something wrong?'

Oh, so that's how he wants to play it?

'Did you have a good visit to Cardiff?' she counters, trying for nonchalant. Her tone betrays her, though; it is tight and clipped.

'How'd you know I…? Oh, I s'ppose Torchwood has a lot of surveillance,' he says slowly, his own voice taking on its own careful, guarded inflexion. 'Was that really necessary? I mean, I know I've been gone for a bit, but it takes longer to get to Cardiff than you'd think. Didn't think a day would matter so much.

'A day?' Rose repeats. 'What are you talking about?'

'Besides, you were out with Jackie all day yesterday, it's not like I needed to be around,' he goes on defensively.

'Yesterday? I wasn't…Doctor, that was last week.'

'What.' He blinks at her. 'No it wasn't. That was yesterday. Today's Sunday.'

'Sunday, a week after you left.'

'That's…not…' he trails off, looking like he's doing some very quick thinking.

'I guess whatever you were doing was important if an entire week went by that you didn't notice,' she continues coldly. 'Suppose that means giving us a ring to let us know you were, I don't know, _alive_ might've been a stretch.'

He mouths wordlessly at her, and then slaps his hand to his forehead.

'The Rift,' he groans. 'Oh, stupid! Stupid-stupid- _stupid_! Should have accounted for the time differential. I didn't think she was old enough yet to cause a displacement, but apparently I didn't factor in prolonged proximal exposure...'

'She?' Rose prompts, the pit her stomach opening wider.

'This!' he says, digging into the rucksack and pulling something out. Whatever it is, it's lumpy and porous and about the size of a box of tissues.

'…what am I looking at?' As far as explanations or excuses go, this one isn't shaping up to be a good one just yet.

'This, Rose Tyler, is our very own TARDIS!' he declares proudly. 'Well, future TARDIS. She's got a ways to go before she's all…up and downy stuff in a big blue box – oh, might not be a blue box this time! She could have her own personality completely different from the original, or she might –'

'You've been growing a TARDIS,' Rose interrupts, disbelief joining the maelstrom of anger and hurt that she's been stewing in for a week now. Her voice is carefully devoid of emotion, but only because she's wound so tightly right now that she doesn't know if she wants to shout or sob.

'Yep! Found the coral a few weeks ago while cleaning out my pockets. Didn't want to say anything until I was sure it would work,' he chatters. 'I didn't think it would work, for a moment there. The shatterfrying process is a one-off, yeah? I needed to make sure it was strong enough. Couldn't think past the problem until I went for a bit of a wander, and then it came to me! Where the hell do you find time energy on Earth?'

'Cardiff,' she answers tightly.

'Cardiff! In every universe, there's a Rift in Cardiff!' he crows. 'Rift energy! Soak it up for a few days and _voila_! Able to withstand up to three times to heat and pressure! So I popped back here, nabbed the coral and headed to Cardiff. Shatterfried the plasmic shell just this morning, and she's taken to it _bee-eau-ti-fully!_ Five years and we'll have a fully functional TARDIS! Sixteen and she'll have all the same capabilities of her mummy!'

'You just…decided to go to Cardiff,' Rose says flatly. 'You…you didn't leave me a note, or phone, you just…went.'

His smile fades a bit upon noticing her expression again.

'I didn't want to bother you while you were out with your Mum. She's always complaining to me she doesn't see you enough, and –'

'Forget my mother for a moment! This is definitely something you should bother me over! You can't just…just disappear and not…' She's rapidly losing her composure, but she can't help it. She knows he doesn't always think things through, but this is a new level of callous, even for him. 'I know you've never had to be accountable to anyone in your life before, Doctor, but that's got to change! I can't…I can't go through this every time you decide you're bored or –'

'I'm not bored! I'd never – Rose, it was an honest mistake! I forgot that sometimes concentrated blasts of temporal energy can be magnified by eleven dimensional entities. I was the close enough to her while she was soaking up the energy that the Rift must have pulled me out of time for a bit.'

If things were different, she might be laughing. The Doctor, displaced in time by the TARDIS – it's happened before. To both of them, in fact. It was always a long-standing joke between them, about the TARDIS having more control over their travels then the Doctor.

But right now, in the wake of the stress his departure has caused her, it's the most recent addition to long list of things he's chosen not to tell her. A list that will keep growing if she doesn't put her foot down now and do something about it.

'The TARDIS.'

'…Yes?'

'The TARDIS you've been secretly growing in my spare bedroom? Which you didn't bother telling me about?'

He hesitates, rubbing at his ear nervously. 'Well…yes. But for a perfectly good reason, I promise. If you'll just –'

'I don't want to hear it,' she tells him tonelessly.

And she doesn't, not really. She has questions, concerns – deep-seated worries for the reason he kept this from her. But she just doesn't have the energy to sit and listen to them.

Ten years she spent building herself up, making sure she could survive without him. He's back in her life barely four months, and all it takes is a week long absence for him to turn her into a wreck again.

She can't let that happen.

Instead, she leaves the salon and heads for her room to pack a bag.

 _It's not running away_ , she tells herself. _It's regrouping._

She wishes she could believe that.

∙ ΘΣ ∙


	6. Chapter Five - Pete's World

**AN: In which several important conversations finally takes place and the thing we've been suspecting is going to happen begins to happen. Also, if Tentoo doesn't sound completely Doctorish at times? Totally on purpose. He's a different person, remember? This chapter was a bit hard to write because it's the first time I've had a chance to sit down since October and actually write…so if it's patchy or repetitive, never fear, I shall be editing it soonish! As this is probably my last update for this year, let me just say: thanks for reading and happy holidays!**

* * *

 **FIVE**

Three days pass before Rose regains enough of her composure to return to the flat.

When she does, she discovers the Doctor has taken apart every appliance she owns, set fire to the couch and used every dish in the kitchen to build some kind of mechanical timekeeping device he insists is more accurate than any clock on Earth.

All of this within seconds of him throwing open the door and blurting out a steady stream of apologies and promises.

'I should have told you about the TARDIS – even if I wasn't sure there would be a point or if it wouldn't work when I shatterfried – never mind!' he rambles. 'I should've told you the minute I found it, but I didn't, and I'm sorry –'

'Doctor –'

'The rest of the growth process can be completed right here, and you can look in on it,' he insists as he ushers her into the flat. 'No travel needed – well, not unless you want, of course, but that wouldn't be for ages – and we're nowhere near the Rift, so it's unlikely I'll miss another week. But if I do – well, I can always carry that mobile you keep threatening me with, if it'll help –'

Rose sighs and holds up a hand to stop his nervous chatter, which he does with an audible click of his throat.

'It's alright,' she tells him, motioning for him to join her on the scorched couch. 'I know you didn't mean anything by it.'

His expression becomes hopeful. 'So I'm forgiven?'

''Course,' she guarantees.

And she does forgive him, really.

Because they've already established that the TARDIS is vital to his mental state, and to a lesser extent, hers. The idea of once more having the safe, comforting presence nearby is tempting, not to say the possibility of travelling the stars again one day.

She even forgives him for disappearing without a word, because he's done that before, too. Although most of their time together was spent in each other's company, there were stints when she was visiting her mother or asleep where she knows he went off and did his own thing. Back then, she always knew he would come back, and so she never worried about it.

It's a comfort level they're going to have to work at to reach once more.

Which is why she has come to a decision.

'I think it'll do us both good to live separately for a bit,' she tells him without preamble. There's no way it won't hurt him right now, and so she just comes out with it.

The Doctor goes completely still.

'We spent so long away from each other, and then we just…sort of…got shoved back together,' she goes on. She tries to ignore how much it hurts to watch his expression close off a little more with every word. 'We're not the same people we were when we first met, and trying to be like it was…it's just making things worse. And then on top of it all, we've got no space to work things out. You're used to disappearing into the TARDIS when you need to be alone. A room with a wooden door isn't really the same, is it?'

'I'll make do,' he says stonily, but she shakes her head.

'You shouldn't be making do. You need a place that's your own. And even if you say you don't…I do,' she admits, then takes a big breath. 'I missed you and thought about you every day for ten years. But you said impossible, and so…I got used to being on my own. I thought that on the off chance we ever saw each other again…'

'It would be in the other universe. On the TARDIS,' he finishes dully.

'Yes,' she agrees helplessly. 'Then, the past few months, suddenly we _are_ together again but it's nothing like what I imagined, and before I can even wrap my head around it, we're together _all the time_. And then you disappear –'

'I said I was sorry –'

'I know you're sorry! That's not the problem!'

'Then what is?' he demands, tugging at his hair the way he always does when he's faced with a particularly frustrating problem.

'Us! You and me! We're the problem!' Rose cries. 'You haven't figured out who you're supposed to be on your own, I don't know who _I'm_ supposed to be now that there's no going back to the other universe, and now we're supposed to know exactly how we…how we fit _together_? We've barely managed a conversation longer than fifteen minutes since we got here!'

He opens his mouth to argue, and then abruptly stops. The fight seems to leave him then, replaced with grim resignation.

She can tell he knows she's right, but it's a hollow victory.

They both agree that the Doctor should keep the flat.

After all, there's nowhere else for him to go, and while Rose wants space she's not about to put him out on the street to achieve it.

It takes her two weeks to move all of her things back to the mansion. Not because she has a lot of belongings, but because she keeps putting it off. She insists to anyone that asks that it's about work, but the truth is that it's just far too uncomfortable being in the flat with him alone. Unfortunately, with the baby TARDIS, he now spends a lot more time at home and so it's hard to find a good opportunity to pick up her things and not have to face hurt looks.

Not that she's avoiding him.

At work she tries to see him as much as possible. It's harder than she initially thought, because despite having been hired for Research and Development, he pretty much bounces from department to department to "keep an eye out".

Which in Doctor speak means purloin "items Torchwood shouldn't have" or "things I need to help the TARDIS grow".

In any case, it always feels like she's running in to him as he's leaving for home or to consult on someone else's case. They exchange greetings and small talk – bloody _small talk_ – but that's about it, and then they go their separate ways.

She's on the verge of trying to _schedule_ time to see him, when it occurs to her that while she might not be avoiding him, maybe he's avoiding her.

This whole thing was about space, after all.

After that, she stops trying to seek him out. In a way, it's no different from the way he behaved on the TARDIS. If he was upset and didn't want to be found, she could search the ship for hours and never stumble upon him. If he doesn't want to be around her now – for perfectly understandable reasons – the best approach is to just let him be.

Taking the completely hands-off approach to the Doctor is a challenge. After trying so hard to find him again, just knowing that they are in the same city together and not on speaking terms is difficult.

But Rose sticks to it, because she firmly believes it will be better for them if they do.

Her resolve lasts a month.

Until one Thursday morning she's chatting with Tosh on her lunchbreak and notices a distinct lack of mayhem in the R&D wing. Ever since the Doctor's arrival, there's some kind of alarm going off there every day.

'Did the other researchers finally get tired of him?' she asks lightly. 'Got him tied up in a closet somewhere?'

'Who, the Doctor?' Tosh asks. She's the only one at Torchwood who calls him by his name, besides Rose and her family. Everyone else insists on calling him Dr Noble. Which is probably why he prefers Tosh to anyone else on staff. 'He hasn't been in since last Friday.'

Rose pauses. 'What's he doing?'

Tosh shrugs. 'I couldn't really understand what he said on the phone. Though, I'm not sure if it's because he lapsed into an alien language, or all the coughing.'

'If he's finally blown up the flat, my mum will kill him,' Rose sighs.

'It sounded more like he was sick, to be honest. He kept slurring his words. I figured that was why he stayed home.'

'Yeah, but…the Doctor doesn't get sick. Ever.'

'Guess it was the alien languages thing then,' Tosh decides amiably. 'I bet he's just busy with that universal translator he's been working on and got engrossed in it. At least he called in this time.'

'Yeah,' Rose echoes, a bit uncertainly. 'Sorry – when did he call in?'

'Er…Monday?'

Three days ago. No one's heard from the Doctor in three days or seen him in almost a week.

It's enough to prompt Rose to make a detour to her old flat on the way home to check in on him. She's almost got her key in the lock before she remembers that this is _his_ space now, and she can't just barge in.

She forces herself to pause, take a deep breath, and knock.

There's no answer.

'Doctor?' she tries again, rapping her knuckles on the door. 'Doctor, are you in there? It's Rose.' She winces at how stupid that sounds, because of course it's her and he's the most intelligent being on the planet, he doesn't need her to identify herself. 'Are you home? Only I haven't seen you in a while, and –'

The door is thrown open and she abruptly finds herself facing the Doctor.

Or, someone who looks like him.

Ish.

He is bleary eyed and pale, the skin of his lips cracked and dry. He's wearing jeans and a jumper, both rumpled like he's worn them a while and looking as if he's spilled his dinner on them at some point. He's also sporting a week's growth of beard on his face.

'Oh, hello, sorry, am I late for work again?' he asks mildly, a slight rasp in his voice.

'The work day's over,' she tells him cautiously.

'Oh.' He blinks, like he's trying to parse what that means. 'Hm. Suppose I got a bit side-tracked. Just as well, at least I don't have to go in now.' He heads back into the flat. 'You could've called – no need to pick me up. You know I don't like to be picked up.'

The place looks a mess, absolutely nothing like the way she left it. Granted, she kept everything meticulous not out of any innate sense of organization so much as a refusal to love the place, but what the Doctor's done to it…well, he always did like a controlled bit of chaos, but this looks more like the health department is going to show up soon.

The floor is covered bits and pieces of every appliance and mechanical device she owned, as well as everything from dirty laundry to candy bar wrappers and what looks like a garden gnome. There's a weird purple mark on the ceiling and something vaguely gelatinous in the sink.

There's also the stale, sickly smell of a living space that hasn't had the windows open in a while.

Having never seen the Doctor in a domestic setting, she's unsure if this is him coping badly or coping well.

A pinprick of worry hits her. 'Doctor, is everything alright?'

'Of course everything's alright – brilliant – molto bene,' he answers tiredly, heading into his room.

At a loss, Rose follows him, not sure what to make of his behaviour.

He's moved the furniture around; there is no bed here any longer, which makes her think he must be sleeping in her old room. Instead, there's the aquarium with the TARDIS coral, surrounded by a nest of wires and UV lighting. The coral is a bit bigger than she remembers it being, and is surrounded by very fine, wispy looking shavings of...

'Are you carving the TARDIS?' she asks, frowning.

'More like pruning, really – TARDISes grow however they want,' the Doctor informs her. 'I just need to guide it a bit from anything too outlandish. Ever seen a bonsai? Same concept.'

'This is what you've been doing since last Friday?' she demands, and then becomes aware of a stench coming from the bathroom. 'Doctor, have you been sick?'

'Oh, yeah,' he shrugs at that. 'Think I might have caught the flu – or measles if the rash on my back are anything to go by –'

' _Measles?!'_

' – but it'll sort itself out,' he dismisses. 'Hopefully soon. Seeing double is making it considerably more challenging to shape the TARDIS.'

'Generally that's a sign you need to take a break.'

'Well, how would I know that?' he counters. 'I've never been sick before in my life. Something obviously went wrong in the metacrisis. Looks like I got an influx of subpar human genes. Apparently I don't have the same immunity to even the simplest viruses anymore – how rubbish is that?'

'Maybe it's got nothing to do with human genes?' Rose asks, feeling like she ought to defend her species. 'I've not gotten sick once since I've been here. Didn't you say the TARDIS took care of that? So even if you got human DNA from Donna, she would've had that immunity too.'

The Doctor scowls at her. 'Stop being clever. I'm supposed to be the clever one.'

'Oh, yeah, I can see that,' she rolls her eyes.

It's clear that the Doctor needs care, because he doesn't even have a smart comeback for her. There's not much she can do for him on the medical front – he's still alien enough that hospitals are out – but she's nursed him through worse before.

It's funny how she's more concerned over the possibility of measles now than she was over a decade ago when he nearly got digested by an alien plant.

'When did you eat last? Or sleep?' she asks. She wrinkles her nose. 'Or shower?'

He gestures vaguely.

'Alright, let's start there. You go take a shower, I'll make you some soup or something. And then you're going to lie down and sleep for a bit, got it?'

'I don't need to sleep. Or eat,' he complains, then makes a face. 'But you may be right about the shower.'

She decides to pick one battle at a time, and doesn't say anything else as he heads for his ensuite.

While he's showering, Rose heads for the ruins of the kitchen and tries to make some headway with that disaster zone. She manages to find a few packets of cup-a-soups while she's there; he might say he's not hungry, but she's pretty sure he'll eat what she puts in front of him.

Then she sets about trying to put some kind of order to the flat, so at least no other diseases will start to incubate there.

The Doctor is back to sitting in front of the TARDIS coral when she finishes.

'Oh, no,' she scolds. 'You're eating something and going to bed. The TARDIS can wait, especially if you're sick.'

'Don't be thick, I've work to do,' he argues, still doggedly tinkering away. 'Haven't got time for it to be interrupted by something as inconsequential as a minor bug.'

'I'm _so_ surprised that you're a lousy patient,' she grouses, forcefully dragging him out of his seat and towards her former bedroom. Another sign of how weak he is that she's able to manhandle him. 'You need to rest. You're not good to anyone if you're about to drop dead from exhaustion and dehydration.'

'I'm hardly that far gone,' he shoots back, shrugging her hand off of him. 'Even if I was completely human, I'd still have at least another day or so before dehydration kicked in. And according to my calculations, with my superior biology, I can last at least another week.'

'At least another – hang on! Are you telling me you're not eating and sleeping _on purpose_?' Rose demands.

'Of course! Human beings have all the same capabilities as Time Lords, you know, just haven't been unlocked yet. And I've got a head start, given my genetic background. It's a simple matter of training brain and body to acclimate to the required conditions.'

Rose's jaw drops and her mind momentarily blanks at the implications.

Then before she's aware of moving, she's reached out and slapped the Doctor upside the head.

'Ow!'

'Are you bloody insane?' she demands. 'You're sitting here, tryin' to kill yourself, just cos you want to feel like a Time Lord again? Of all the stupid, immature, petty –'

'Oi, it's not petty! You'd understand if you'd ever changed your entire biology before!'

'No, I wouldn't! Because this isn't about you getting used to being human, it's you trying to compete and measure up to _him_!'

'But that's what you want, isn't it?' he snarls. 'You want me to be him, you want to be in the other universe! Which is why I don't know why you're here, puttering around like you actually care, when it's clear I'm the last person you want to be around!'

'You have no idea what I want. Or you don't care, which is more likely.'

'Of course I care!'

'If you cared, we wouldn't be trapped here!'

'That was him, not me!'

'Enough! Either you are the Doctor, or you aren't! You don't get to pick and choose. If he left us here, own up to the fact you would've done the same!'

'Fine! I would've – but that goes both ways, Rose Tyler! I can't conveniently be the Doctor when you're happy, and then not be him when you're not – it doesn't work that way. Worse, it makes me feel like I'm just constantly a replacement for him, and I'm not! _I'm not_!'

He is wild eyed now and tugging at his hair in something like desperation.

'I stopped being him the minute I started to make my own decisions…my own choices,' he tells her in a much more subdued tone. 'And look where it got me.'

Rose is taken aback by this.

Most of the fight has left her, and now they are facing each other with something that is more exhaustion than anger.

'I wish I could be the Doctor you wanted to be with,' he goes on. 'For both our sakes. And if I had the twat here, I'd tell him that myself. Right before throttling him 'til his respiratory bypass kicked in for not giving me a choice to be here.'

It takes a beat for the implications of this to sink in, and when it does Rose feels a dull pang in her heart.

'So…what you said on the beach…' she trails off, not wanting to give the thought full form but knowing that she needs to know.

'You asked what the Doctor said to you, Rose, and I told you,' he answers, weary. 'Because I remember what he said – what I said – even if this mouth didn't say it. And I do love you, if only because I was created to. This body and this face, was always meant for you. But I won't lie and tell you I wanted to be here. He's forced this…making us live the "adventure he never had". And which neither of us will ever have, cos you're too busy resenting me for being the Doctor and not being the Doctor. Eventually you're gonna have to choose who you're angrier with, don't you think?'

Rose feels that ever present guilt swell up again,

She hasn't been very fair.

This whole separation, even if it was a good idea and a mature way of tackling their relationship for the first time, it wasn't put into place for the reasons she said. She recognizes that now – the fact that it's just a facet of the depression she's been battling these ten long year which made her lash out.

She was just trying to cope with this Doctor being close enough to the other without actually being him. And just when she got used to their awkward and uncomfortable pseudo-relationship, he disappeared on her.

It stands to reason she got upset and did what comes naturally to both of them: she ran.

'You have severe abandonment issues,' he tells her wearily, and she realises she's said most of that out loud..

'Sorry,' she murmurs.

'Nothing to apologise for,' he replies. 'I've heard it's a good thing, talking about your issues. Least…that's what Donna's telling me. Up here.' He taps a finger to his temple.

'Donna's…telling you?' she repeats.

'Well…' he frowns. 'Memories. Donna doesn't actually tell me anything. Can't, even if she were here. Not after…'

He goes quiet, the way she's noticed he tends to do when he mentions Donna. 'Doctor?'

He looks conflicted for a moment, and then takes a deep breath. 'Donna's gone. She's not travelling with the Other anymore.'

'What? How do you know?'

The barest flicker of hesitation, before he answers in a dull monotone, 'There's never been a human-Time Lord metacrisis before, Rose. There's can't be.'

'But you're –'

'Time Lord. More equipped to having another life squeezed into my brain,' he sighs. 'But my mind in Donna's? It would be like…like you having the Time Vortex in yours. Tenable for a short time, but it will ultimately kill her.'

Rose feels sick. 'So she's…she's dead?'

'No,' the Doctor shakes his head. 'I wouldn't be able to live with myself if that happened. I'll he'll – have removed the memories. Every bit of our life with Donna, erase it. She'll have gone back to who she was before she met me by now.'

'That's horrible,' Rose whispers.

'It's the only choice he had.'

'No, it's not,' she answers passionately. 'If it was me…if it was me, I'd rather die than forget a second of travelling with you. I _know_ Donna would be the same! If you had done that to me after I took in the Vortex –!'

'You wouldn't even have known. You'd have gone on with your every day life, none the wiser, and I –'

' – would have had to live with the fact that you basically lobotomised me,' Rose finishes furiously. The Doctor's mouth drops open in surprise, and she continues angrily, 'Don't deny it, that's pretty much what it comes down to, isn't it? All so that you – he – don't have to watch someone you care about die?'

'She'll have a chance, at least, to be that person again,' he murmurs dully.

'No, she won't,' Rose argues. 'Because all of the memories and experiences she had with you won't be there. She might be brilliant again, but she won't be your Donna. That one's dead.'

His fists clench and she knows that not only is he aware of this, but it's something that he has been struggling with since they got here.

Cursing herself for getting caught up in her anger and ignoring his – again – Rose reaches over and gently squeezes his shoulder.

'You're not the one who did it, Doctor,' she tells him. 'If you're blaming yourself for it, you shouldn't be.'

'Shouldn't I? If I didn't exist, Donna would still be Donna.'

'No, she wouldn't. None of us would be. We'd all be dead. So it's a good thing you do exist, and I know Donna would have felt the same up until the last second, so don't you dare blame yourself for that!'

He seems surprised by her outburst, which isn't surprising considering their inability to get along recently.

'You killed the Daleks! _He_ would have kept giving them chances, until more people died than would have from the start,' she continues. 'There's being a pacifist, and then there's having common sense, and as much as I lo – _loved_ him, I've always known he has his faults. He gets people killed as much as he saves them. And he makes bad decisions all the time, only when he does, it's a million times worse than anyone else.'

She recalls a young maid dying in a basement in Cardiff because of his need to be merciful, and then his petty torpedoing of a promising politician's career for not acting as _he_ would have.

Rose isn't stupid. She may have accepted the Doctor's actions as gospel when she was younger, but even then she knew he wasn't the epitome of good and righteousness. He was human enough in that respect. She became even more aware of that simple truth in her time away from him, when she had to step in to the role of Defender of the Earth. Sometimes, it just wasn't possible to be merciful when the alternative was total extinction.

'It's the trying that's important,' she continues quietly. 'And you, _you've_ been trying. You tried to save the universe – and you did – getting rid of the Daleks. You tried to give me a choice even when you knew there really was none–' An expression of chagrined surprise crosses his face, and she continues, 'Don't think I haven't figured it out. Picking between two versions of you, it's like picking between leather-you and pinstripes-you. Impossible. We would've been standing on that beach all day, if you hadn't said…what you said. Even if it wasn't true.'

'Rose, it _was_ true –'

'I know that. But it's like you said. Just cos you don't feel it, doesn't mean he didn't say it,' she sighs. 'If anything, this you has never lied to me. Forgotten to mention something because you've got a memory like a sieve, maybe –'

'Oi!'

'But you've never lied to me and said you loved me that way when you didn't.'

'That's not true, Rose – he does love you –'

'He did, once,' Rose agrees. 'I think. Up until the second he realised he couldn't. Or shouldn't, maybe.' Quite without her permission, her eyes have begun to water and she angrily swipes the tears away before they can trail down her cheeks. 'Stupid me, though, I didn't realise it until we got back to this universe. Suppose as far as rejections go, being abandoned on a beach is as clear a message as any…'

'Just the opposite,' he insists. 'He wasn't rejecting you, Rose – he was trying to give you a chance at the life you deserve. The one you wanted – a life, with the Doctor.'

'On his terms. Not mine or yours,' she retorts hotly. 'Might've been nice if he gave us a choice.'

'That's something we agree on, at least.'

'Then he deserves what he gets,' Rose decides furiously. 'You can only give someone so many chances before they have to just…just live with their decisions. And if he wants to be the highest authority, worried about people "withering and dying" on him all the time, then he deserves to be alone!'

The words seem to echo in the silence of the room, and Rose wishes she could take them back right away because she doesn't mean them. Not really. She's angry with the Time Lord, but she would never truly wish him something so painful as the permanent solitude he appears to have resigned himself to.

The part-human Doctor watches her, sad and knowing.

'You can't hate him, Rose. You love him and you always will,' he tells her unhappily. 'Leave hating him to me. I've centuries of practice, after all. Besides, even I can't hate him, not really. I understand why he did what he did, even if I wish he didn't. Being the highest authority still comes with a price, and in this universe, that would be me.'

'Highest authority,' Rose scoffs, a little bitterly. 'There you go again, always thinking you're so impressive.'

'I am so impressive.'

Their eyes briefly meet at that, the old joke diffusing at least some of the tension in the room.

Rose exhales dejectedly, and asks, 'So now what? If neither of us can really hate him?'

'Guess it means we'll have to accept it and move on.'

'And us?'

'I suppose we have to decide if we want to follow the dream he chose for us, or decide for ourselves what we want.'

'And what is that?' she asks, a little guarded.

'Oh, no idea,' the Doctor shrugs, a world weary expression on his face. 'Suppose the best way to deal with all this is to take it slow. Adapt.'

He sounds like he's reciting something he's memorised, and Rose wonders if this is more appropriating of Donna's memories or just something he's picked up in centuries of observing human behaviour.

In any case, it's a step in the right direction, and if he can be responsible for that, she can be responsible for the next.

'Yeah, but that doesn't mean just close off from each other,' she cautions. 'Not seeing you or being around you – Doctor, you're my best friend. And I've missed you for ten years. Just because I said we needed space doesn't mean I don't want to see you. That doesn't do either of us any good.'

'Agreed.' He looks relieved, and then a bit guilty. 'But I think you were right. Before. About being apart. You needed time to be angry – properly angry – at him before you're ready to give us… _whatever_ "us" is…a chance.'

They gaze at each other in silence for a moment, and slowly, he holds out his hand to her. There's a tentative little wiggle of his fingers, which has her mouth quirking upward in a small smile.

'Look at you, acting like a grown-up,' she tells him, reaching forward to entwine her fingers with his. It's the first time they've held hands since that day at the cemetery. 'You're being far too smart about all this. Is that more Donna, then?'

'Very possibly,' he replies seriously. 'Either that, or the amount od Dr Phil I've been watching is beginning to rub off on me.'

' _Dr Phil_?' Rose repeats. 'When did _you_ watch Dr Phil? That's American – and they don't even have him in this universe. It's Dr Trevor here.'

The Doctor looks scandalised, and then moans, 'Oh, don't tell me that! What kind of rubbish world have I landed myself in?'

∙ ΘΣ ∙

Things improve after that.

With everything finally out in the open, it's easier to move past all of the little things they haven't been able to say to each other. The Doctor no longer feels as pressured as he did those first six months, and Rose seems less burdened.

They enter into a kind of routine, healthy actual _friendship_.

At least that's what Donna's memories tell him he's a part of. Her mind has coloured his own recollections of his previous relationship with Rose, alternatively labelling it as "love at first sight" and "unhealthy codependence" depending on what mood he's in.

This time around, they aren't "shacking up" within a day of meeting each other, but are taking things slow. Rose continues to live with her parents and he still lives – _temporarily_ , considering his work on the TARDIS coral – in the flat.

Which is a good thing, because the distance gives them both time to step away and readjust their expectations.

There are still days when Rose will look at him, obviously expecting him to act or react like the other Doctor. Sometimes he finds himself surprised that she understands some complex physics or engineering concept, and despite his pride, he misses being able to explain it to her.

But they're getting through it, which is what's important.

The Doctor has started to adjust to living in a single planet and a single time, too. He still has itchy feet, but it's easier to fight down as the months go by. The TARDIS coral helps with that, a bit, but it's his latent connection to the other Doctor that really makes all the difference.

The Other may be actively blocking it, the bastard, but sometimes things slip through – images, feelings, emotions – and the Doctor finds he's sort of able to retain some connection to his old life. Thoughts and dreams give him the reassurance that somewhere in the universe, a part of him is still travelling around, making a difference.

This knowledge bolsters him whenever he feels the pressure to adhere to the life that this him never really wanted. Specifically at staff meetings and Vitex parties, where he has to make small talk and pretend to be no more than a rather clever human prodigy.

The free nibbles and Rose's hand in his help too.

Diminished as it is, the prospect of another few decades of this being his life isn't as terrible as he first thought, and he figures the hardest times are behind him now.

He has even grudgingly come to terms with the more embarrassing and debilitating limitations of this new body, in the face of having once been practically immortal.

 _All part of being human_ , he decides, and tells himself he's perfectly alright with that.

Until a month later, when it happens the first time.

He is in the middle of explaining to Toshiko the schematics of a generator which would allow the creation of an underwater water-refining station, when his mind stalls like a car engine.

'…could be ergonomically and environmentally possible, given current available resources. It's all just a matter of reproducing beneficial algae and converting surrounding toxins back into their original-original-original-original-original-original-original –' He takes a big gulp of air, trying to quell the sudden disconnect between his brain and mouth, and then slowly continues, ' – forms for easy reprocessing.'

Toshiko stares at him. 'Are you alright?'

'Sorry, just got a bit excited about the whole idea for a minute,' he laughs off. 'Come on, there's a Kaxlonic converter in storage that would work _perfectly_ on a smaller scale!'

He darts off, followed by an obviously confused Tosh. She doesn't ask about it again; probably thinks it's just him being _him_.

He does too, a bit.

Hopes it is, because this has been a rather odd regeneration. It's possible it's taken him so long to acclimate to this body that the quirks are only showing up now. This incarnation always had a bit of a gob, and his brain always works so fast that his mouth sometimes can't catch up with it.

Word repetition acts like a cue, ensuring he remains on point while trying to dumb things down for the silly humans.

When it continues to happen, however, an unwanted, black little suspicion – fear – begins to grow.

The second time, he and Rose are in his flat watching a documentary on prehistoric super-predators, engaging in what Jackie Tyler jokingly calls "date night".

It isn't, really – even seven months after Bad Wolf Bay, they aren't there yet. They've only just regained what it means to be mates, and neither is keen on ruining that by moving too fast.

Although they are curled up together on the couch, it's only because the other half of it is so buried beneath clothes and other junk that there's no where else for Rose to sit. Neither minds; he's got a warm armful of Rose Tyler on one side and a cup of tea on the other, and she's busy laughing as he corrects everything the so-called "experts" are saying.

The whole bit reminds him of the occasional downtimes on the TARDIS, after a particularly difficult adventure required one or both of them to take a mental health day. Or if Rose was on her monthly and refusing to do anything physical if she didn't have to. They would sit and watch reruns of old alien telenovelas with the translation circuits off, and make up ridiculous dialogue.

Domestic as it was, he always enjoyed that sort of thing.

'It's wrong in both universes!' he protests half-heartedly as she shakes her head in mock-exasperation.

'How do you know?' she challenges. 'You've barely been here a year, you can't have memorized the whole universe's history already.'

'Can too!' he protests as her mobile rings. She untangles herself from him, a bit reluctantly, and digs out the phone. 'The whole premise of a parallel universe is that there's a divergence point where things change, ensuring that at least the first portion of its run is exactly the same as the prime universe.'

Rose rolls her eyes and moves away from him, covering her free ear with one hand as she tries to hear what the other person is saying. A bit rude, that; considering he doubts anyone on the other end of the phone could possible have anything as interesting or informative to say as he does.

'Given what our research has found, the point of deviation was our non-visit to Torchwood Manor in 1879, and with that premise, I've only had roughly a century and a half of history to catch up on,' he continues when Rose finally puts down the phone. 'There's only a finite number of deviations that could happen between that point and now, which means I know for a fact that so-called "expert in the field" is pulling his entire thesis out of his –' He cuts off, noticing slowly that Rose's expression has turned from amused exasperation to something like confusion. 'What?'

'That paleontologist bloke must really be upsetting you,' she remarks. 'You don't usually start spewing a different language unless you don't want me to understand when you're swearing.'

'I wasn't swearing,' he protests. 'What are you talking about?'

'The long lecture you were just giving me in…I dunno, I want to say Japanese, but it didn't sound like Japanese to me.'

He frowns, hastily going over the last few minutes of his talking in his head. He can't recall having lapsed into a different language. Ever since landing in Pete's World without access to decent translation circuits, he's made an effort to keep even the occasional alien loanword from creeping into his speech, just to avoid having to explain it to other people.

As his brain replays what he just said, he realises Rose is right. He's apparently slipped into Radirian, a language he hasn't needed to use in at least three hundred years.

'So if you weren't swearing, why switch languages?' Rose asks.

'Oh, well…it's a good language to get angry in,' he shrugs off. 'Forgot there were no translation circuits anymore.'

Her face is drawn, though, like she doesn't believe him. 'You've never done that before, though.'

'Sure I have, I'm just better at catching it usually,' he assures her. 'Probably just haven't been getting enough sleep lately.'

Wrong thing to say.

Although it has the desired effect of distracting Rose from his sudden linguistic departure, she's now standing over him with her hands on her hips and a furious expression on her face. Once again he is reminded that Jackie Tyler's blood runs through her veins.

'If you tell me you've been trying to keep yourself awake on purpose again – '

'No, no-no-no! Just had a breakthrough with the TARDIS and forgot to go to bed the past few nights,' he squeaks

'Doctor,' Rose groans, clearly gearing up for a lecture.

He is quick to promise to take a nap right away, sure it will help.

Even if it won't.

Because he knows what this is.

He wishes he didn't.

The next day, a few quick tests in Torchwood's lab confirms his suspicions.

The metacrisis was obviously more unstable than he originally thought, because he's pretty sure that his mind is degrading. Too much of himself got left with Donna, leaving his brain weakened against too many memories and too many lives.

He's only part human, and thus more adaptable, but the deficiency is still there in his genetic makeup. Dodgy regeneration and all. The deterioration will happen – it's just a matter of when. The entire process will be much slower, but in the end, he'll go the same way as Donna.

If he's lucky, he'll be able to delay it; get a few years, a decade if he's lucky.

Right away, he decides not to tell Rose.

Not until he has to, anyhow.

He knows she'll think she's being cheated out of her future, even if they aren't together right now.

Besides, he's terribly clever and he's certain that with a bit of thinking, he'll find a way to deal with this minor hiccup. If nothing else, if he manages to get the TARDIS built soon, they can avail themselves of myriad future medical technologies that will help him.

Which means stepping up the growth schedule as much as is possible without sacrificing functionality.

That in mind, there are very few things he can do at this juncture to safely speed up the process. Luckily, placing the dimensional stabiliser a full month ahead of schedule is one of them. It's important to do it before the interior of the coral grows larger than the exterior, or the entire process will fail.

Thanks to the sonic (and some pilfered parts from his Silurian contacts in Wales), the Doctor manages to cobble together a rough-looking, albeit fully functional device in no time.

He spends an entire day carefully placing and readjusting it over the growing heart of the baby TARDIS, at the center of what will eventually be the console.

The next day, he strides into the R&D department with an actual _purpose_ for the first time since he built the sonic.

'New project,' he announces to Toshiko when he notices her. She is monitoring the progression of an alien fungus that might have the ability to cure halitosis. Since becoming human, that's been a constant source of annoyance to him

'Another one?' she asks vaguely. 'For fun or for work?'

The question is perfunctory; he almost never works on anything that doesn't interest him. Pete's gotten used to that and rarely tries to talk him into anything he doesn't agree with or find intriguing.

'Neither, really,' he answers. 'Let's call it a prospective cure for neurodegenerative diseases.'

Toshiko looks up at that, a hint of a wrinkle in her brows. 'I thought you said weren't going to give humans a leg up when it came to illness or life-extending measures?'

'I'm not,' he shrugs. 'This isn't anything to do with prolonging the stupidly short human life span – just retaining full neurological faculties while you do.'

'How?'

This time she sounds curious instead of suspicious, and he grins.

'Advanced brain mapping,' he declares. 'Sort of a virtual, psychic cloud, with a telepathic interface and keyed to a genetic imprint.'

He counts three seconds as she processes what he's said and begins to consider the technical implications. As expected, she's immediately caught on to his line of thinking.

'So no one can hack into it.'

'Exactly.'

'But isn't that moving a bit close to artificial intelligence?' she worries. 'The Director isn't going to sign off on that, especially not after the Cybermen.'

'Don't be thick,' the Doctor rolls his eyes. 'The whole point of the genetic imprint would be that once the connected sentience expires, the memories would go with them. I told you this isn't about extending life, just preserving _quality_ of life.'

One of the best things about Toshiko is that she just accepts this. Not the slight bending of the truth – he feels a bit guilty to be covering for himself by starting this new project – but because she doesn't argue to push the boundaries further than what he has proposed. She never does, which is a rare quality in a scientist.

 _So preoccupied with whether or not they can that they don't stop to think if they should_ , he muses, and then frowns. _No, wait, that's_ Jurassic Park.

It's still true though.

Most of the scientists he has met, human or Silurian, are constantly resentful and angry because he refuses to divulge life-extending technologies or modifications to give humans beings the edge. They are so busy trying to fight off scenarios that won't even be possible for another few hundred years that they fail to appreciate the most basic improvement in the here and now.

Thankfully, Tosh is more appreciative of the problem-solving itself than the end result, which is why they get along so well.

That and she's just a genuinely nice person.

Even as his latest project is given the green light by Pete, thus providing him with a cover for his real intention, the Doctor can still feel the neurological deterioration day by day. And though he's far from becoming a dribbling invalid any time soon, he's aware enough of the process that he knows he needs to start planning.

Imagine. Him. With a _plan_.

It goes against his genetic makeup. Twice.

There are technological components he needs for his project, chemicals and herbs that can help him in the meantime. But having them shipped to London will be difficult, if not an invitation for suspicion. And the people he will need to consult – experts that existed in the other world that _might_ exist here, but who won't allow themselves to be found if there is even a whiff of Torchwood about him.

The best chance he has of getting the help he needs is to seek them out personally. While Toshiko perfects the brain-mapping cloud he's designed – he wouldn't trust anyone else to do it – and Rose keeping an eye on the developing TARDIS, he just might be able to pull this off.

Assuming he can convince Rose without telling her the whole truth, that is.

 _It's not a lie_ , he stubbornly tells himself over and over. _I'm going to tell her. If I told her now, she'd want to help, and she can't, and that would make her feel worse._

 _Whatever you say, Spaceman,_ Donna's voice grumbles. _I hope the worst she does when she finds out is slap you._

It's a rare and troubling thing when all the voices in his head agree.

Trying to broach the subject with Rose prove difficult.

He repeatedly loses the words when he tries to start the conversation, either over breakfast or on the odd day where they come in to work together. There's always some emergency, whether work-related or Jackie Tyler related which gets in the way.

After his latest attempt to talk to her after dinner one night is circumvented by a late-night emergency at Torchwood, he decides to just come out with it as soon as he sees her next.

Which is why later that night, apropos of nothing, he declares to her as they hang off the edge of a scaffold outside St. Paul's, 'I'm thinking it's time for a holiday.'

A nest of creatures that Torchwood calls Weevils have gathered far below them, waiting for them to drop; another pair of them are trying to crawl out on to the scaffold after them.

'First day in the field and you want a holiday?' Rose grunts, trying to keep her grip on the metal edge and at the same time depress a small mechanical button he gave her earlier.

'I am not "in the field", Rose Tyler. I am simply offering xenobiological support because your team's setup is woefully inadequate for dealing with Sxaravids,' he reminds her, his throat needing a bit more effort than usual to produce the _click_ in the species name. It's because of the difficult pronunciation that everyone continues to call them Weevils.

'And there's the alien smugness I've been waiting on all night,' Rose grins. 'I was beginning to think you were sick again.'

'Why do you keep asking if I'm sick when I do something you don't expect? I'm allowed to do the unexpected – as I recall, that's one of the things you like most about me. I'm absolutely impossible to predict!'

'Says the man who gets tetchy when his hair doesn't fall _exactly_ so…'

'Very funny – I wish they hadn't followed us,' he bemoans, eyes on the sharp-toothed aliens moving gingerly forward across the scaffolding. 'Not much more likely than we are to survive a fall from this height.'

The nearest Weevils get a bit too close, and the Doctor shifts around, before lobbing a small device at them. It causes the pair to freeze for a moment.

'Temporary timelock,' he declares cheerfully, enjoying Rose's expression of surprise. 'Been working on it with Tosh. Won't last very long though.'

'And you couldn't use it before we were hanging over a hundred-meter drop?!'

'Last resort – Sxaravids are time sensitive, I don't want to disrupt that too much unless I had to. Speaking from experience, it's rather painful.'

'I would've chanced it,' Rose growls, finally managing to keep her grip and get her other thumb over the button. 'Ready?'

'Ready,' he sighs.

Rose depresses the button, and the air is suddenly filled with an eerie, echoing moan. It seems to resonate under the Doctor's very skin, causing a crawling, fragmenting sensation. Down below them, the creatures that have so lately been snarling and waiting for him and Rose to drop to their deaths, suddenly fall into a neat circle. They bow down, almost in reverence.

'Get the containment unit here,' Rose orders as loudly as she dares. The Doctor doesn't bother to tell her she could be as loud as she wants, the Weevils won't take any notice of her. The particular sound frequency is meant to access the pleasure centres of the brain and instil a sense of docility in this particular type of creature.

It makes it that much easier for the field team to round up the now compliant Weevils and return them to the Torchwood facility without incident or injury. It's a temporary solution of course, but better than the usual bag-and-tag mentality of Rose's team. Once the Doctor manages to create a safe and stable form of cross-galactic transmat, he'll be able to send them back to here they came from.

Still, it takes the rest of the night to properly settle the Sxaravids into their new habitat, and by the time he and Rose head out it's almost two in the morning. She elects to come home with him rather than drive all the way out to the Tyler estate and then back five hours later.

Having had to work up the courage to bring up the topic the first time, the Doctor is more than content to let it fall back into the unspoken once he and Rose return to the flat. She goes to take a shower, and he heads to his room to check on the TARDIS before bed.

It's not the end of things, however.

'So,' Rose says, returning from the washroom with damp hair and wearing one of her old jumpers and sweatpants which she left behind upon moving. 'A holiday, you were saying? Where would we go?'

'Erm,' he hesitates, wincing because he knows this conversation isn't going to be a pleasant one. 'I was thinking that this first time – this _one_ time, I should say – I would – well, I want to – no, _need_ , to –'

'Doctor,' Rose cuts him off, tone flat.

'It's…something I should do on my own.'

Every syllable causes Rose's expression to close off more and more, and by the end of the sentence he can see a flash of hurt that she doesn't manage to hide.

'Rose, I didn't mean it like –'

She cuts him off, not with words, but with a shake of her head. Then she takes a deep breath, like she's centering herself. It's a tick he's noticed since he's been back in her life, one which replaced the quirks he remembers from before. Of her biting her thumb nail or smiling his favourite tongue-touched smile.

She hasn't done either of those things since he's been in this universe.

'What do you mean?' Rose asks him now, tone neutral.

'We-e-ll.' He tugs on his ear, uncomfortable. 'It's like you said, about needing space. To figure myself out.'

The words feel like something out of the dramas Donna always watched, and he hates himself for using them. But even as he says them, and although their purpose is to cover for him, he finds that everything he is saying actually is the truth.

'You said people, like us, who…who are together…are supposed to be able to be their own person.'

'I thought that's what we were doing –'

'We were – we _are_ – but there's not much finding out I can do if you're always just a Tube ride away.' Again, she barely manages to suppress the flash of hurt at that. 'Travelling, it's always been who I am. And even if it's better with two – even if it's _always_ better with two – sometimes you just need – well _, I_ just need, this one time – to make sure I'm still _me_ enough. Does that…does that make sense?'

'…A bit,' she answers, somewhat dully.

'And it's not just me I need to prove myself too – I need to prove to you that I'll come back. Already did better than the last time, haven't I? I'm telling you first before I go anywhere,' he coaxes. 'I am trying.'

Rose observes him for a long moment without responding, as if she is trying to decipher something. She's looked at him that way before, even when he was leather and ears, and it's always terrified him. Because the idea of anyone deciphering anything about him when he tried so hard to mask everything was frightening.

Then her shoulders slump a bit. 'Guess it all falls right in line with not trying to change you.'

'Oh, perish the thought!' he answers with forced levity. He tries to make a joke of it, adopting a faux-American accent and exaggerated swagger. 'I'm a rogue! A wild card! A rambler and a rover!'

But the smile Rose returns continues to be tight.

'If you don't want me to go…' he begins, trying to rapidly come up with a new plan that doesn't result having to see Rose Tyler absolutely gutted again.

'No, no, you're right,' she hurries to assure him. 'You should. And telling me first is…really considerate. Think you might be channeling Donna again, though.'

'Is every decent thing I do going to be passed off as Donna from now on?' he complains, only half-insulted. For the most part he's just relieved. 'Cos she wasn't that considerate. Had no sense of privacy, barged in to places without warning – bloody rude, more like!'

'Yeah, but she was ginger, so it balances out,' she teases, and then sobers. 'So, where are you going to go? I'm guessing a cruise isn't exactly your cup of tea?'

'Not since the last one,' he shudders, remembering the _Titanic_. 'I dunno, always been curious to travel by train. See the sights the way you humans do. Obviously it's a step down from disappearing-here-reappearing-there, but that'll come soon enough. Train might be a good first trio – _oh!_ Do they still have an _Orient Express_ here? Or did it close down already? It did in the other universe.'

'As far as I know it's still running…'

'Brilliant!'

A wan smile appears on Rose's face, and she relaxes a bit more, easing back into their usual banter. 'What are you getting so excited about? Oh, let me guess, you're hoping there'll be a murder or something you can solve?'

'Well, it might be a little on the nose, but yeah…'

'Not on the nose at all. There wasn't an Agatha Christie in this universe, either,' Rose informs him apologetically.

This time, the Doctor is speechless.


	7. Interlude I

**I know you were all expecting a longer chapter and the continuation of what's going on in Pete's World, but I've been massively busy with school and grading the past few weeks. So, to tie you over until I manage to get the next chapter finished (it is in progress, I promise!) here's a brief bit of Donna! Because she is awesome, even without the Doctor :P**

* * *

 **Interlude I:**

Donna Noble has an utterly normal, ordinary existence and she's perfectly happy about it, thank you very much.

Granted, living life as little more than a professional temp does get a bit inconvenient, especially when it comes to trying to plan holidays. Or when she bumps into Chanelle Du Breer from secretary school who married her boss and can afford a personal trainer, and who Donna lies to about now running her own company –

But at least she's meeting new people and working in different places. Networking and the like. That's important these days, everyone says so.

Her mother might wish she was more like other people's daughters – who went to some nobbish university and live on their own and work high powered jobs – but Donna's got no patience for the likes of that. Or the pretentious people that inevitably go with that territory.

As far as she's concerned, she's honest and real and she'll catch her big break any day now.

Her life is routine – she eats the same meals that promise they're low fat, low carb and high fibre while secretly sneaking chocolate at the nearest Sainsbury's Local. She watches the same television shows as all her friends and disparages the stupidity of the obscenely famous while devouring every bit of celebrity gossip she can. Her evenings are spent listening her mother's complaints about the idiots at city council who can't organise the weekly rubbish pickup let alone how to run Chiswick properly. She criticises the same things as everyone else, feels a smug sense of superiority and certainty that she's cleverer than all of her friends, and aspires to nothing more than to get married and have children.

Not necessarily in that order, because if the right man doesn't come along, she sure as hell won't wait around for him!

It's not the best life, but it's far from the worst, and she's fine with that.

Really.

One day, though, her mother suddenly starts being _nice_ to her.

She can't remember the last time Sylvia Noble was anything but judgemental. Donna grew up with every compliment swiftly followed by an admonishment or criticism. Spontaneous congeniality only happens when her mother's had one too many vodka-cranberries with the girls.

And then there's Gramps, who will be talking to her as usual and then suddenly _look_ at her.

Like she's dying of cancer, but doesn't know it.

It's about the same time all of her friends start going on about planets in the sky and aliens and all that other stuff that she always seem to miss. Either sleeping through it, or being hung over or on holiday.

'Is there something going on?' she demands one morning at breakfast, when her mother offers her an extra cherry pastry without commenting on her weight or blood sugar. 'You lot better not be keeping something from me.'

'We're not keeping anything from you,' Gramps is quick to insist, while her mother snorts.

'Feeling a bit self-important this morning?' she chides. 'Best get back to work, that'll cure you. Where is it this week, the telephone company?'

'It's an Internet start-up,' Donna sniffs, striding out of the kitchen in a huff. With the pastry, of course, because she's not sure when her mother will be making them again.

She lets it go, but things don't go back to normal.

In addition to her mother's bursts of amiability and her grandfather's looks, little things begin to change.

She develops a sudden, inexplicable fondness for bananas and an utter hatred of anything pear-flavoured. One morning she finds herself posing in front of the mirror with a sprig of celery, weighing the merits of decorative vegetation.

Donna's very glad no one's home to see that. Her mother's threatening to have her sectioned as it is. She nearly bought a car she saw in a newspaper advert the other day – a canary-yellow Edwardian roadster that Gramps thought was charming.

The most frightening bit happens when she accepts a temporary assignment in Shoreditch. Instead of showing up for the job, she spends the entire day wandering aimlessly up and down the street near the local junkyard, looking for something she can't quite define.

Donna's beginning to think she's losing her mind, but a trip to the clinic results only in a half-hearted diagnosis of stress.

When he hears of it, Gramps suggests she needs a vacation.

'All that job hunting and not finding anything permanent? It's making you anxious,' he tells her. 'Too much stress isn't good for you, even at your age. You know what you need? You need to get away! Go on! Travel a bit! It might make you feel like your old self!'

Whatever that means.

Surprisingly, even her mother agrees.

'There'll be all new jobs when you get back – and if you go somewhere sunny and get some colour, you won't look so peaky! No one'll hire you if you look like you're just off disability,' Sylvia drawls as she shells peas.

Which is as close to an endorsement as she'll ever get from her mother, so Donna spend the rest of the evening checking to see if she has enough Air Miles to afford a quick trip somewhere warm. Majorca looks nice, and there's a discount for groups, so she tries to convince her friends to come with her.

'Think of it – all inclusive swim-up bar,' she enthuses into the phone cradled into her shoulder; her hands are busy twisting the top off a jar of raspberry jam. 'And they've got those theme restaurants, yeah? It'll be just like doing a proper world tour without having to leave the beach!'

Top removed, she scoops up a large glob of jam with two fingers and stuffs it into her mouth.

'I'd love to,' Mooky drawls, 'but with all the alien invasions, I've missed so much work. I've got to put in more hours at the office. Else that cow from accounting will step in, and she's been after my desk for weeks now.'

'Oh, go on! Even if there were aliens – which I still don't believe, by the way – why would that have anything to do with us? You really think some green man from, I dunno, Mars, gives a toss about your roots showing?'

'Probably more than they'd care about your five dollar manicure.'

By the time she's finished of the entire jar of jam, she's managed to convince Veena and Alice to come along on vacation. Mooky continues to beg off, which is fine by Donna, because she really didn't want her along anyhow.

They book the trip the next day, and within two weeks the three of them are sipping margaritas by the poolside and making bawdy jokes about the bronze-skinned Adonis that keeps bringing them towels.

'Think he's sweet on you,' Veena teases. 'Bringing offering to find another umbrella like that? Bet he figures with all your freckles you're about to burst into flames!

'Please,' Donna scoffs. 'I've sunbathed in Xtonic sunlight, I'll be fine.'

'What-tonic sunlight?' Alice wants to know. 'I thought there was only the one kind.'

'There is only the one kind,' Veena rolls her eyes. 'Ultraviolet – see, says so, right here on the sunblock. Donna's just had too much to drink.'

'Have not,' Donna retorts, although she has had four drinks so far. Not that it matters, because the alcohol hasn't even begun to give her a buzz. She suspects the bartender is skimping on the booze and means to tell him so the next time she heads for the swim-up bar.

'Then you're as barmy as ever, cos there's only one type of sunlight, dummy.'

'It's got something to do with new spa treatments,' Donna retorts primly, though she really doesn't have a clue what Xtonic sunlight is or why she brought it up in the first place. 'I had it the last time I went to one. Dunno how it works exactly, but that ain't my job, is it? The point is, it exists, and it was lovely. Didn't give me any more freckles, either.'

Veena and Alice exchange knowing glances, obviously thinking she's full of it and Donna bristles. She feels irrationally angry because she's sure that she's right, and she wouldn't have said anything if she wasn't.

Probably.

Ish.

She's opening her mouth to lambast them for thinking they're more clever than she is, when something catches her eye.

There's a small figure that has been wandering back and forth past their lounge chairs for five minutes now. When she booked the tickets to this place, she thought she specified an adult-only resort, but it seems as if someone hasn't read the rule, because that's clearly a lost child.

And an odd-looking one, at that.

The girl can't be older than six, but has pale, clammy skin and mismatched eyes look larger than normal. She's wide-mouthed and it looks almost like her fingers might be webbed. There's also an almost iridescent sheen to her skin which makes Donna suspect she's probably Radirian.

None of this matters as much as the look of absolute, abject terror on her face that Donna knows well.

'Hey, are you alright?' she asks, hopping up from her lounge chair and crouching in front of the strange looking girl. The child's eyes widen in surprise and then relief.

'I can't find Mummy,' she says shyly.

'Well, we'll just have to sort that, won't we?' Donna asks with a comforting smile. She offers the little girl her hand and straightens up, throwing a comment over her shoulder to her friends, 'Be back in a tick. Order me another margarita – and make sure it's actually got some alcohol in it this time!'

She doesn't notice the open-mouthed looks her friends are giving her.

She leads the girl away from the pool, intent on bringing her to the reception area or somewhere that her parents might think to look for her.

'What's your name, then?' she asks as they go. 'I'm Donna.'

'Serenloo,' the girl answers shyly.

'That's, er, an interesting name,' Donna says. 'Are you on holiday with your family?'

'Yeah. But Daddy got lost,' Serenloo tells her blithely. 'He says it's just a wrong turn, but Mummy said it was cos he wouldn't ask for directions _lightyears_ ago.'

 _Precocious kid_ , Donna thinks with a chuckle. 'Yeah, well, men never ask for directions. It's a universal constant.'

Other people are staring at them now as they walk, which Donna thinks is rather rude. What's to stop any one of these rubberneckers from helping out a kid that's obviously scared? She determinedly glares back at anyone whose gaze she meets, and they always meekly look away.

It's giving her a headache, but it's worth it.

She and Serenloo wander for a quarter of an hour before they find her parents down by the beach, frantically wandering around the various couples and singles stretched out on towels. They are as odd-looking as their daughter, but their gratitude is more than obvious when Donna leads the little girl back to them.

'You lot need to be more careful,' she tells them matter-of-factly after watching Serenloo cling to her mother's knees. 'There're a lot of weirdoes around here – and I'm not talking about perverts, either. Torchwood might have you lot in a second if they had an office here.'

'We apologise,' the little girl's father says, gazing at Donna with something like surprise and astonishment. 'We did not realise this place had intelligent life when we stopped.'

'It was only to check that we were on course,' the mother insists. 'By the time we figured out where we had gone wrong, Serenloo had wandered off.'

Donna's headache is increasing by the second, and she supposes that maybe her friends were right. The sun is beginning to affect her.

'Yeah, well, kids do that. It's why you're supposed to keep an eye out. You're just lucky you ended up in an adult-only resort. Makes it easier to pick her out of a crowd, I guess,' she turns to leave. 'Now, if you don't mind, I need to get out of here before I get sunstroke. And you lot need to leave before you get in trouble here.'

'Our transport is already primed,' Serenloo's father says. 'Thank you very much for returning our little one.'

'It was nothing,' she tells them and then walks away, heading back to the poolside. Oddly enough, the farther she gets away from the little family, the better her head feels. At the same time, the entire incident begins to retreat to the back of her mind like an old memory.

She's almost completely forgotten about it by the time she gets back to her lounge chair.

'What was that all about?' Veena demands when she gets back.

'What was what about?' Donna wants to know.

'With the strange looking kid,' Alice elaborates.

Donna stares at them in confusion, momentarily confused about what they're talking about. She screws up her face in an effort to remember. 'Oh, that was nothing. She was lost, helped her find her parents. That's the sort of thing _decent_ people do, which neither of you would know…'

'Not that,' Veena rolls her eyes, impatient. 'You were talking to her in a different language. Japanese or something.'

'I did?' Donna asks. She tries to reflect on the whole matter, backtrack and re-examine the past hour of her life. As she does, her head gives a painful throb of warning. For a moment she imagines a voice at the back of her mind – a soft, kind voice with the barest bit of warning there – soothing her away from that line of thinking.

 _It's not important enough to look into, Donna,_ the voice insists. _Trust me. For your sake, let it go._

It's built into her DNA to find things out whenever someone tells her not to, but there's something about this voice in her head that she trusts implicitly.

Which is why she tosses her hair over her shoulder and airily retorts, 'Well, must've picked up more than I thought I did on my last vacation. Know what they say about being immersed in a different culture. You can become fluent in _any_ language doing that.'

'Yeah, but when did you go to Japan?' Alice asks.

'Never mind that,' Donna says impatiently. 'Know what I want to know? Why you didn't get a drink for me!'

'Haven't seen the waiter,' Veena retorts. 'I think he's angling for tips over with those blond chav by the cabano.'

'Hmph. Well, his loss,' Donna sniffs. 'I'm hungry anyhow. Might as well go get ready for dinner. Think I've had enough sun for one day. Aren't we signed up for one of those theme restaurants tonight anyway?'

'Yeah, the Spanish one,' Alice confirms. ' _Le Mala Loba_ –' Donna's stomach leaps at the name, but she can't think why. 'I hope they've got better food than the Thai place went yesterday, did you see the hives I got from eating that sauce? I swear…'

Alice's chatter trails off as the three of them begin to pack up their things to leave the pool.

Donna can't help one last confused look in the direction of the beach before she goes.

 _Forget_ , the voice in her head tells her.

She obliges.


	8. Chapter Six - The Doctor

**And a bit of a check-in with our favourite Time Lord after a while without him. Warning, major angst and depression ahead. Ten's not in a good place right now…Spoilers and some dialogue from the comic stories** _ **Time of My Life**_ **and** _ **The Forgotten.**_ **As usual, edits will happen when I have the time.**

* * *

The Doctor has a harder time ignoring things than he imagined he would.

Which goes against everything he is, as a Time Lord, and as…well, _him_.

He was born into one of the strictest, most emotionally repressed societies in all of existence. Everyone was connected to everyone else, but actual relationships and emotional bonds were frowned upon.

He has always been different. Possibly due to the circumstances of his birth, possibly because after looking into the Untempered Schism he was irrevocably altered. He can't even put into words what it was he saw back then, especially now that it's been so many years for him.

Whatever it was, it's part of the reason he left Gallifrey.

Oh, of course there was the fact he was bored out of his mind. And he was more than a little terrified of the grandiose destiny the universe seemed to want to force upon him.

But for the most part, he intended to find out just what it was he had actually glimpsed in that opening in a Time and Space. His whole life, even while he languished on Gallifrey all those years, he felt like he should be running towards something.

And he had brought his granddaughter along on his search for it. And for the company, of course, because against convention, he had formed an emotional bond to her.

The first of many.

But the Doctor is still a Time Lord, and ignoring emotion should be second nature to him.

No, first nature. Definitely first nature.

Which is why he's finding it so frustrating that he can't just step back into his life the way he always has after a particularly devastating loss.

Every time he thinks about walking out that door and facing what might be his next great adventure, he finds himself frozen. He simply stares at the inverted words, hands in his pockets and rocking on his heels for a bit, before remembering a book he hasn't finished reading or long-forgotten room that needs cleaning out.

It's not because he's afraid of travelling – of course not!

Only…the TARDIS has been a bit tetchy lately, that's all. He doesn't think it would be a good idea to land somewhere unstable or technologically incompatible if he finds out he needs a specific part.

He keeps telling himself that as the days pass without him leaving the Vortex.

It's a lie that would be more effective if he couldn't feel the TARDIS's displeasure. Every hour that passes, it becomes more insistent, more tangible. She might be trying to tell him something, but he honestly doesn't want to hear it, and so just ignores her.

He buries himself in tedious, utterly meaningless chores. Tasks that require his complete attention and not focussing on any number of the painful experiences he has recently undergone.

He avoids the control room.

After the first week, the TARDIS stopped letting him tinker, especially when they both knew there was nothing that actually needed fixing. She took to shocking him for coming near the centre console, in the end.

So now he spends his time in other places. Trimming the cricket pitches, reorganising his cravat collection, trying to hunt down all of the missing last pages in the library…

One day, the phone in the control room rings as he's wandering by. He bounds toward it, thinking that this is the push he needs to get out the door – a genuine distress call!

But Torchwood's Caller ID flashes on the view screen, and the Doctor shrinks back.

Even if the remnants of the organisation don't have the same evil as the one which separated him and Rose, he doesn't like to get involved with them. Especially considering their leader.

He doesn't want to talk to Jack.

Knowing the Captain he's going to try to talk him in to cocktail night or something utterly ridiculous now that they're supposedly on better terms. That will inevitably lead to Jack calling him out for what he did to Rose and the other Doctor.

If anyone in the universe has the right to lecture him, it's Jack. And the Doctor just can't take that right now.

It's possible there's some sort of crisis going on back on Earth, something the humans needs him to sort out…

But the idea of returning there churns his stomach.

 _Jack will sort it_ , he decides, and heads to the kitchen. There are still several bottles of ginger beer left from Donna. She would always complain that the TARDIS' jolting made her time sick – which wasn't even a thing! – and bought a crate of the stuff. It's stored next to several bottles of Glenfiddich that William Grant himself gave him.

For the first time since the Time War, the Doctor consciously decides to get well and truly sloshed.

Repeatedly.

Slowly, the Doctor sinks into a depression that feels almost worse than when he first lost Rose. In fact, he doesn't remember this level of emotional turmoil since the days immediately following the Time War.

He spent some time in a mental institution right afterward, but he doesn't remember much. It could have been days or decades, for all he knew. His time sense was so deluged by grief and guilt back then, it wouldn't have done any good to know anyway. This time, he has a better sense of the way time continues to march on and the universe keeps spinning, but it's muted.

Because this time, he just doesn't give a damn.

He wakes one morning – _No such thing as morning on the TARDIS_ , a Northern voice sneers at him – to find he fell asleep in the library at some point. It's the latest in a long line of rooms he's made into a temporary sleeping area.

He's been avoiding his room – too many memories of Rose there.

They were never physically involved, of course – he was always too much of a coward – but somehow she always found her way there when he was in the throes of a night terror. He suspects the TARDIS used to alert her, in the same way he was often called to Rose's room when she was ill or recovering from an injury or swept up in her own nightmares.

It's not the only room he can't bear to go into.

The recreation room reminds him of Donna, and the kitchen of Martha, and…well, there are ghosts almost everywhere despite the impossible size of the TARDIS. It's hard to find anywhere in here that doesn't dredge up memories of people he's lost.

Distantly, he becomes aware of the TARDIS humming at him. She sounds uneasy, but then, she has for several days now. He's stopped caring about it.

'Yeah, I can see that,' a voice snaps, and the Doctor suddenly finds himself very awake.

His ninth incarnation is leaning over him, all leather and disappointment, scowling.

The Doctor squints at him. 'What the hell are you doing here?'

'I'm not here. I'm the TARDIS Voice Visual Interface.'

'Voice Interface my arse,' the Doctor retorts, pulling himself to his feet. 'I never enabled you. And if I did, I'd've chosen someone I like.'

'I'm programmed to select the image of a person you will heed,' the hologram informs him. 'Of several billion such images in my databanks, this one best meets the criterion.'

'Oi! "Heed"? Why would I ever heed this one? Thought he was better than everyone and never listened – I mean, he was always good at lectures, but other than that…'

'This program is able to offer medical analysis and limited psychological counselling. Given the experiences of loss by this incarnation, it is hypothesized that it would be most appealing to you in your current mental state.'

'I haven't just lost the Time War, you stupid machine,' the Doctor growls.

'You have lost your home once more.'

'Have not. Still here, aren't I?'

'You have lost your home once more.'

'How have I lost my home? We're still flying through the Vortex, I've still got a nosy timeship in my head, the universe is still spinning, everyone else is off living their lives. So really, haven't lost anything.'

'There's me.'

The hologram flickers and then suddenly it's not his ninth incarnation he's staring at, but the pink and yellow girl he brought to watch her world burn.

The Doctor's blood seems to freeze in his veins, and he glowers at the hologram. He sticks his finger in its face. 'Don't. You. Dare. You can show me any face you want in that databank of yours, but you _will not_ – ' His voice has risen to a shout, ' – take her face.'

The interface ignores him. 'You have made errors.'

'I'm not listening to you as long as you use her voice,' he replies, turning and stalking from the library.

'You will not listen anyhow,' the hologram yells after him. 'You have ignored information. Vital data has not been processed –'

But he turns a corner and the voice fades. Luckily the voice interface can't walk around, even if it can project itself in different rooms.

Except for one.

It has only been here since the incident with the Toraji Sun. But he needed to recover after that one, in a less conventional manner than the usual trip to the med bay.

He flees to that refuge now, locking himself inside the stimuli-free environment and ignoring his bond to the TARDIS as doggedly as he has been ignoring both the other Doctor and Donna.

As he slips out of consciousness once more, he decides he will simply stay here for the rest of his life. Never going anywhere, never making the mistake of meeting other people ever again. He can't take his hearts being broken again, and he doesn't care if that makes him a coward.

It works fine for a time – several weeks, according to his barely aware time sense. The Zero Room helps him filter out outside influence, and he can lose himself in recollections – the good kind.

He loses himself, reliving the moments that made him happiest in his long life, and ignoring everything beyond those good memories.

But there's only so long it works, before memories bleed into his subconscious and become dreams. The kind which infringe and taint the things he remembers with fondness.

Dreams turn to nightmare, and he is not longer reliving only the good moments, but _everything_.

All of it.

All the companions that he has lost to dire circumstance or his own stupidity along the way.

Susan, Vicki, Katarina, Dodo, Jamie, Zoe, Jo, Sarah Jane, Adric, Teagan, Kamelion, Peri, Ace –

No! He doesn't want to relive these memories. Something keeps reminding him, twisting the metaphorical knife, and he can't escape it. Just like he couldn't escape the Time War, the blood on his hands and the constant guilt.

And then he met Rose Tyler.

Rose, who promised him forever. And he was certain that she would have kept that promise if she could. If she hadn't been human, it's exactly what she would have done.

The thought terrified him. Still does, since he's being honest, but back there, on that beach…

When he lost her the first time, he told himself it was the universe torturing him; showing him that he didn't deserve to have anyone. And he accepted it.

When the opportunity came to get her back, he left her with his double. Because it would mean she was happier without him. It didn't matter if he was miserable, as long as she was happy.

He thought he was being noble,

 _Except you weren't, were you?_

The hissing voice echoes all around him, startling him. It's not a voice he knows, not one of the ones always rattling around his brain.

'Who's there?' he demands. His eyes are closed, but it still seems like there is a dark shadow looming before him.

 _The same person that's always there. Hanging about, keeping us honest. Keeping us from telling yourself comforting lies._

'Yeah, sure. Except there's no one actually in here except me. Nice try.'

 _Exactly._

The Doctor tenses at that, and if his eye were open, they would be narrowed. 'Who are you?'

 _Always have a different name, don't I?_ _It was Valeyard, once. Some day it might be Dreamlord. Today…oh, today you can call me Doctor._

'Stop it.'

 _Because it all comes down to the same thing, in the end, doesn't it? I'm always us._

'Stop it!'

There's a low, dull noise somewhere, like growling. A rumble of warning that gets louder by the second.

 _Deep down, in the darkest darkness of your heart, there I am,_ it continues. _The reason you can't have happiness. Because of everything I will do…through_ you _._

The Doctor feels a tightness in his chest, like he's stopped breathing. For all he knows, he has.

 _Oh, but if that's true, you've got a dilemma,_ the voice chuckles. _Go on then, if you're so noble. Do the right thing._

'The right…?'

 _Because really, if you think about it…wouldn't it be easer? Wouldn't it be so much better for the world, if you just gave in?_

"Gave in to what – to you?' he snaps.

 _Gave in the compulsion to just end it. All of it._

The rumbling becomes louder, an angry snarl. It's not the TARDIS; she is curiously absent at the moment, likely kept out of his mind by the Zero Room.

"Oh, look at that, another part of me with suicidal tendencies. I'm so surprised,' the Doctor snaps.

 _It would be for the best_ , the voice continues. _Keep more innocent people from getting hurt – being dragged along in the wake of the Oncoming Storm. No more making good people into soldiers, eh?_

'That's not what I…that's not –!'

 _You really believe that? Really? Sounding a bit defensive there. Bit odd, considering you don't even believe what you're saying._

His words dry up in his mouth, and the growling suddenly devolves into a whine. It's plaintiff and somehow filled with denial.

 _You don't believe you deserve to be happy._

He wants to deny it, but the words don't come.

There is ringing silence, making the words all the more painful.

Because it really is true.

Oh, he can rage at the universe and blame it and every dictator, war or misalignment of the stars within it for his fate. Act as if it's a concrete being that takes perverse pleasure in torturing him.

But at the end of the day, he knows it has nothing to do with the universe and everything to do with the simple truth: he doesn't deserve happiness.

He can say its his friends who leave him as much as he wants, but in reality, it's him heading them off. He _makes_ them leave, and he has done for centuries.

It started with Susan – he practically forced her off the TARDIS – and it's come to a head with Donna and Martha before her. And Rose…he's been forcing her away since his last body, hasn't he?

He makes their decisions for them, insisting he knows better, and the kicker – the absolute foul and ironic little detail in all of this – is it's not even for his own benefit! There is no way he benefits from this or is rewarded in anyway, beyond an existence of misery set to repeat.

As if, after everything, it's all he deserves.

It's only after a beat, where his sense of self-recrimination nine hundred years' worth of regenerations fail to argue that point that he suddenly understands that the only thing he deserves to be is miserable.

He always thought his punishment – especially after Gallifrey fell – was just to live. To be the last of the Time Lords, the last of his kind and doomed to wander with that knowledge the rest of his days.

Apparently being the last of his kind isn't the punishment after all – it's to be constantly pursuing a happiness that will never materialise.

With that realisation, he feels the fight leave him.

After all, if that is true, what is the point?

If it all comes down to him deserving to be miserable, keeping on just ensures that he plays in to whatever the universe has decided for him. His inner self – whatever it was calling itself – might have been right.

Wouldn't death be a crafty, much easier way of choosing his own destiny?

Time Lords have control over all of their bodily functions. He could simply will his heart to stop or his respiratory system to fail. With enough concentration, he might even force his massive Gallifreyan brain to shut down.

Like a restorative coma, except this time there would be no turning the lights back on.

 _That's it_ , the voice practically giggles in satisfaction. _Let it all go. The hope, the doomed friendships, the victory that's always,_ always _, short-lived. Our life's a testament to that, isn't it?_

Somewhere at the back of his mind, someone – or something – is crying. Whining, like an animal in pain.

 _Let it all go. After all, believing in those things never did any good. When has loving anyone ever given you an advantage? Even believing it was possible has caused us so much pain…_

There's an abrupt, all encompassing silence, and then an unnatural awareness passes over him.

Realisation hits, followed by certainty.

It's not a happy feeling, but it's enough to make him feel oddly buoyant. If he were sitting, he would straighten up.

'Well, you're obviously not me, then, are you?' he hisses at the dark shadow. 'Cos whatever else in this world, whatever's happened or is going to happen, and however terrible it is – one thing doesn't change. I might have no use for myself, but I will always – _always_ – believe in her!'

And the snarling, growling noise suddenly hits a crescendo and he isn't alone against the darkness anymore. A golden eyed wolf rises up in front of him, shining against the backs of his eyelids, teeth glinting as dives for his tormentor, tearing into its throat.

The Doctor jolts awake, the suddenness of his awakening causing him to fall out of midair. The Zero Room's anti-gravity has reasserted itself with his consciousness.

Shock and confusion eliminate whatever trace amounts of lethargy have held him in their grasp for so long, and gradually his awareness returns as well.

He forces himself to his feet, wobbling a bit as his center of balance comes back to him. All of the aches and pains of his nine hundred odd years, and none of his usual lightness of foot.

So much for neurological healing.

He staggers from the room and back into the TARDIS corridors. A quick glance around tells him the TARDIS is almost completely powdered down.

He doesn't bother asking her to relight everything. There isn't a point.

The Doctor heads for the kitchen, deciding a cup of tea will make him feel a bit more like himself.

Hoping, more like.

Once there, he discovers the milk has gone off, the biscuits are stale and the remaining bananas are overly ripe. As expected, the TARDIS continues to be in a strop with him, because she usually keeps food from degrading.

 _Another way of trying to force me out into the world?_ The Doctor wonders at her, earning the eleven-dimensional equivalent of the brush-off when she doesn't reply.

'Fine. I'll go,' he says out loud, trying to ignore how his voice cracks. 'But only because I'm hungry.'

He supposes he might go to a century in human history that he doesn't know, but only because he needs to get milk. Just a quick trip, avoid time periods filled with people he knows, and under no circumstances let anyone else on board.

But in the end, the TARDIS refuses to go anywhere.

The controls are locked, and when he goes to try to fix them, the grating pulls up and sends him face-first into the floor.

'Well what the hell do you want me to do then?' he yells, pulling himself. 'Master of mixed signals, you are! Either wake up and travel, or wake up and don't travel – can you make up your mind?' He yells at the ceiling, practically jumping up and down. 'D'you mind at least not tormenting me if you don't know what you want? If it wouldn't – be – too – much – _trouble_?!'

He has enough indecision with his own convoluted thoughts, all eleven versions of them – thirteen, now.

He marches to the console with renewed vigor, intending to run a diagnostic to find out if there are glitches causing the TARDIS's behaviour or if it's just a continuation of her latest input in his life.

'Don't need a giant, nagging ship in my head doing the same thing, especially not after everything that's –'

He inadvertently nudges something as he leans over the console and there is an almost inaudible, high-pitched beep and then a static frequency fills the air behind him.

He whirls around to see what's going on now, and freezes. The air before him flickers, and then fills with a ghostly green spectre – an Emergency Program.

Fantastic.

It becomes clear a second later that it isn't one that he set.

The Doctor's throat threatens to close when he recognises the figure in front of him.

' _Hey there, Spaceman,_ ' the spectre declares, sounding smug. _'Bet you didn't expect to see_ me _again_.'

'What…?' he whispers, because there's no other word to encompass everything he wants to say right now.

' _Right, I think it's_ recording _this time…third time lucky!'_

From the clothing, he judges the image to be from early in their travels together. Possibly the day after they encountered the Adipose, which makes it all the more impressive that she figured out how to access the Emergency Programs.

Actually, knowing Donna, she was probably mucking about when he wasn't looking and stumbled on to it.

' _Thought I'd leave_ you _a message_ ,' Donna's hologram informs him. ' _Just in case I didn't get the chance to say goodbye_ properly. _Y'know, through being eaten by a_ swamp monster _or something!'_

He can't help wishing her fate had been so simple.

' _I just wanted to say that, whatever's_ _happened, Doctor, I wouldn't have missed it for the world_ ,' the recording informs him. The image of Donna puts hands on hips, leans forward and shoots him an intense stare. ' _I've had the_ _time of my_ life. _So no regretting stuff,_ right? _I chose this._ I chose you.'

Far from comforting him, that makes it all worse. How many people have chosen him and lived to regret it? Far more than who died before they could, he knows that much.

' _Like I said, that Christmas_ …' The Donna-Recording continues, 'Find someone. _Because travelling's not half as much fun on your own. You need someone to_ show off _to!'_ Donna's expression gentles. _'I was_ wrong _, what I said back then. You don't need someone to_ stop _you. You need someone to_ keep you going.'

She smiles now, genuine.

' _That's all I wanted to say._ Thanks _, basically. And good-bye.'_

'Bye,' he croaks, as the image disappears and he is once more left in the dark, emptiness of the TARDIS control room.

The Doctor feels completely gutted.

Donna's is the last face he expected to see just now. The facsimile created by the program is _her_ , an imprint of her back when she was still Donna. This is the part of her he hasn't managed to kill.

There's a bitter humour to all of this.

He's usually the one recording the Emergency Programs for his companions, the last message should the worst happen. Now that he's faced his own, in the guise of his lost best friend, he feels like a prick for having started to practice to begin with.

No wonder Rose reacted so badly to Emergency Program One. He wants to shout at the hologram like it's the person who recorded it. He wants to yell and scream that she has no idea what she's talking about, vent his frustration on the stupid ape.

All things considered, ripping open the TARDIS console seems like a reasonable idea just now. Too bad he has the discipline not to rip apart the universe just to throw a tantrum.

At least, he thinks he does.

Her words ring in his head.

 _Find someone_ , was her advice. As if she knew what she was talking, as if she had any business ordering him to do something from beyond the metaphorical grave.

Maybe she is – _was_ – right.

Maybe he should do as she says, find someone else before he's not so distracted that he doesn't try to alter the universe irrevocably.

Donna, past and present, wouldn't want him to be alone. Martha, Rose…everyone always warned him off being alone, as if it was something he had control of. Something he could sustain in the long run if he put his mind to it.

None of them seem to understand how hard he tries _not_ to be alone. How hard he tries to find people and _keep_ them with him. But inevitably, they leave him – by choice or circumstance – and he ends up alone anyhow.

It's like it's his lot in life.

He snorts at that.

The thought is depressing, but not without merit.

Maybe this is his punishment for centuries of sins. It has to be, because he was losing people long before the Time War. It just seems like he's been losing them a lot faster and a lot more often lately.

Resigned to this, he sets the coordinates for Barcelona.

'Might as well put two inner demons to rest at once,' he declares with forced cheerfulness, and pats the console. 'And you, you don't need to needle at me anymore. I'm going. Off to do brilliant things in amazing places, as always.'

The last is said with bitterness, though. Because his misery is a fixed point, and while he might have to endure it, he doesn't have to be truly accepting of it.

Oddly enough, instead of becoming more relieved, the TARDIS' presence feels more upset and wary. The constant sense of unease and warning that has been surrounding him for days now becomes almost like a siren in his head.

And that's when he senses it.

He whirls around, staring up at the ceiling of the control room, just in time to see something swoop down on him from the shadows of the darkened TARDIS.

It all happens too fast for him to gain more than imprints – a crab-like, centipede type of creature.

It seems adventure has gotten tired of waiting for him to come 'round and has instead come 'round to him.


End file.
